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If you have friends like that, you don't need enemies.

It wasn't the communists, it wasn't the socialists, it was the capitalists who are currently digging the grave of the market economy.

As if in times of a pandemic it was not already difficult enough for private individuals to defend individual fundamental rights and freedoms of the market economy against state power and public coercive measures, attacks from their own ranks that threaten the existence of a Bundestag election year now follow.

It will be completely irrelevant whether at the end of legal proceedings the "serious corruption problem" recognized by the Social Democrats for a ruling party committed to the market economy is legally confirmed in the procurement of masks.

Just as it will remain unimportant that the Wirecard scandal or the control failure at Bremer Greensill Bank are exceptions.

In the privacy of the voting booth, the crosses are seldom awarded with the head, but mostly from the gut.

Billing is based on personal (pre-) judgments and non-objective facts.

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For a growing part of the population it hardly matters that the majority of German companies, medium-sized businesses, and small and micro-businesses are run properly.

The individual criminal cases will steer the voting hands far more strongly than the general rule.

The current misconduct by Union politicians and board members is part of previous misconduct in the market economy - from the diesel scandal, “Panama and Paradise Papers” on tax avoidance to the absurd trickery of cum-ex deals.

All in all, there is a linkage and networking that pulls the ugly face of the market economy into the public eye.

The population is becoming suspicious of whether what has become visible in recent years is only the tip of an iceberg.

And she asks herself, understandably and correctly, how much remains hidden in the depths of the market-based underworld.

Authoritarian systems show their strength in the pandemic

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At the beginning of the 2020s, the market economy was under enormous pressure everywhere.

The glaring light of media attention illuminates the tricking and deceiving criminals.

Behind the scenes, however, the market economy is threatened with further existential dangers from all sides.

Anyone who has always relied on the state and mistrusted the market saw themselves completely confirmed in the Corona crisis.

While a government committed to the market economy does not manage to vaccinate the masses of the population at breakneck speed, authoritarian regimes are far more successful elsewhere.

Again, the completely correct justification is misleading that it is not the market economy, but on the contrary, the state economy that is responsible for the vaccination scandal.

In fact, it is governments, ministries and health authorities who first seized power in the fight against corona and are now failing to exercise it.

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Again, however, very many view the question of responsibility and guilt very differently.

Some even see themselves confirmed that a dirigistic, authoritarian state party is pursuing the most effective crisis policy.

China is being propagated as an example of Zero Covid that is worth emulating and praised as a role model for the collective interests of society justifying taking coercive measures and disregarding privacy.

However, suspicion of the market economy had spread in European societies long before Covid-19.

Ever since the financial market crisis at the end of the noughties, a growing part of the population felt that the market enabled private individuals to make substantial profits.

Losses, on the other hand, would be socialized, banks rescued or nationalized.

A pattern that became déjà vu in the corona pandemic.

Too much has gone bad, especially during the last few months of a rampant state economy that has focused all efforts on the fight against Covid-19.

To sum up the perception of the population in a nutshell: Those who are capitalists have won, those who work hard have to fight harder than ever for survival.

Big companies are saved with billions, small ones driven into bankruptcy

This is how stock prices break records non-stop.

Big data companies in the data economy - such as Amazon, Apple or Microsoft - were able to massively increase their market capitalization.

Large companies were rescued with billions of euros from the tax coffers.

Smaller businesses and the self-employed, however, were forced into bankruptcy by government enforcement measures.

Thousands of jobs have been lost, millions are at risk.

Even if the state economy is responsible for many things, in the eyes of many the market economy has not kept what it promised.

Social elites and their economic market economy ideologies have too often disregarded grandiose announcements and too often disappointed expectations.

You preached prosperity for everyone, but pursued your own interests - by all means and, if necessary, beyond the rules of the market economy.

Now the market economy is threatened with the receipt.

It should be distributed in the elections.

It is more likely than impossible that the state economy enthroned as a short-term exception will then become a long-term permanent state.

Longed for by many to put the market economy back in those chains that, in the eyes of their opponents, tame market failure, market power and their abuse.

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Anyone who wants to save the market economy now has to act quickly on two fronts at the same time.

With an offensive, the market economy must regain the confidence of the population.

The market economy must convincingly demonstrate that it primarily serves the interests of society, that it breaks the power of individuals and allows everyone to participate in its successes.

Many people consider the distribution of wealth to be unfair

It is simply of no use and does not help to keep counting on the fact that in the long term everyone will automatically benefit from the completely undisputed positive effects of the market economy.

This is undoubtedly true when it comes to the general standard of living.

In absolute terms, the masses are materially much better off now than their parents, the purchasing power of wages is much higher and more people have more of almost everything than ever before in Germany.

In relative terms, however, it is also true that the differences between better off and worse off have not really disappeared.

It is not so important whether this is really the case.

What matters more is how the population thinks things are going.

Many people rate the economic distribution in terms of income and even more so in terms of assets as unfair and find this expectation confirmed by the Corona policy.

They are unwilling to accept polarization and division, as well as uncertainty about how things will go on with their jobs and income, as a necessary evil for an overall improvement in living conditions.

They demand more security, more opportunities and more balance than before.

And now!

It does not contradict the market economy to accept this normative, socially desired intention and to put it into practice as efficiently and effectively as possible using market-based instruments.

Politics sets the goals, the market economy implements them!

And on the defensive, the market economy needs a moral renewal.

It lives from the general trust that it will be "fair", that general rules apply to everyone and that everyone will be treated equally by the referees.

If laws are broken in cold blood by executives and wealthy elites, or if a minority overturns them by circumvention, which may even be legal but contradicting good faith, the market economy inevitably falls into disrepute.

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"Everything on shares"

is the daily stock market shot from the WELT business editorial team.

Every morning from 7 a.m. with the financial journalists Moritz Seyffarth and Holger Zschäpitz.

For stock market experts and beginners.

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When the elite are tricking and manipulating, society judges such behavior first with suspicion, then with contempt.

Eventually general morality is lost.

But then the market economy is faced with an existential threat.

Because therein lies the big and decisive difference: In authoritarian systems, rule is dictated by force, in market economies by conviction.

And majorities have to be found for them.

Thomas Straubhaar is professor of economics, especially international economic relations, at the University of Hamburg