I'm tired of hearing 'i must be jealous' I am NOT jealous. I am tired of hearing 'if they didn't do it someone else would have' that thinking can justify anything. There are things that ought not to be done, even if they CAN be done, simply because it's better in the long run. Every decision should not be based on in the what is in it for me NOW evaluation. There is more to decision making than instant-blind-grasping-gouge-out-as-much-for-yourself-as-you-can rationalization labeled as 'a free market.'

You know, one of the definitions of 'a free market, check Adam Smith, is that both parties have, I am paraphrasing perhaps, 'perfect information' meaning the freely-entered-into arrangement is transparent. Transparency of market is a hallmark of 'a free market.' The trouble with a lot of free marketeers is that they want to have transparency without offering it. This is called gaining an advantage but it then ceases to be a free exchange when both parties do not have 'perfect information.' Everybody wants a free market so long as THEY are free and the other guy isn't. Over in other threads people are hollering because the offers have changed or been pulled. Isn't that the 'free market' doesn't it cut BOTH ways, apparently not. A great part of the history of so called free markets have been attempts to make the market less than free, under the guise of free markets, in order to profit inordinately (can you say the Hunts, can you say Enron). In reality most markets are to some degree less than free and the sloganeering about free markets is one-sided.

Even Churchill knew the folly of so-called totally free markets...

"We are for private enterprise with all its ingenuity, thrift and contrivance, and we believe it can flourish best within a strict and well-understood system of prevention and correction of abuses."