From Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy, pp. 125
Markets are many things, but they are never free. The sociological critique of market liberalism is too well known to require rehearsing here, but this passage from John Ruskin suggests the tone of all subsequent critiques:
"In the community regulated only by laws of demand and supply, but protected from open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant.
The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and Godly person." (Unto This Last, ed. L. J. Hubenka [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967], pp. 74-75)