The Tea Party may be the answer.
Our political leaders are not leading for us. The country's political structure is controlled by oligopolies that control many of our major industries. The members of the oligopolies no longer strive to provide the consumer the best goods and services possible at the lowest cost possible. Instead, their objective is to keep their stranglehold on us and keep the oligopoly alive to keep things intact.
In reality, they are doing what Adam Smith advocated when he wrote his book defining capitalism called "Wealth of Nations". In this historic book, the producers of goods and services, corporations, should be looking out for their rational self-interest. At the same time, the consumers, us citizens, should also be looking out for our rational self-interest. In this manner if the producer does not provide the goods and services desired by the consumer, at a competitive price, he goes out of business.
The problem in today's society is that the consumer has not taken sufficient action to look out for his self-interest. A major vehicle available to the consumer to seek what is in his self-interest was hijacked by the oligopolies - our politicians.
We the consumer, citizens, have allowed our politicians to be bought through campaign contributions from these oligopolies. If this country is going to return to greatness, the citizens must take control. In our free market system, a major role of the government is to create the rules by which business must compete and then be the umpire to enforce the rules. When the rules are broken down, we no longer have free markets. Instead, our markets are controlled by a few large organizations who are members of these monopolies.
Our problem is that the great majority of our politicians are beholding to these control groups and therefore change is hard to bring about. The same group that has control over our politicians also has significant control over the media in this country because of the "advertising dollars" paid by the members of these oligopolies.
This is why the Tea Party is looking more attractive everyday. If the Tea Party is to gain traction it must appeal to more than just those who believe the government must move out of the way and let the “free market” do what it wants. The role of government must surely be limited. However, one of its principle functions needs to be the rule maker and umpire who makes sure big business, the oligopolies, are playing by rules that are in the best interest of the citizenry of this nation. If the Tea Party can accept this role of government it has a chance of success in 2014.
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