Though he often disagrees with libertarians and other free-marketeers, Kinsley is one of the few critics who appears to understand the argument for free markets and who acknowledges that there’s something to it:

Student loans are the clearest example of the common Republican confusion between free-market capitalism and business. Capitalism is an economic system that is held, with some justification, to be the best guarantor of prosperity. Business can be capitalism in action, or it can be something entirely different. There is very little about the student loan program that has anything to do with free-market capitalism. Yet whenever the student loan system comes under criticism, lobbyists, “industry” leaders and supportive politicians haul out the same old cliches, as if they were defending Adam Smith’s famous pin factory itself.

I would add, however, that many on the Left likewise confuse government activism with “power to the people.” Typically, government activism just ends up giving power to business.

Either way, business wins!