Has any Western Society ever truly had a Free market?

[reardenstone]

Should this be in Philosophy or here?

If a western industrialized society had a free market please give us the 5 Ws and maybe how.


I have knowledge of traditional societies and economies and pre-industrial practices but I am lacking in the economic history of the industrialized world. From my understanding, feudalism led to mercantilism which paved the way for colonialism and then mercantilism morphed into State Capitalism which is what we have today.

When socialist types argue with standard issue Republicans they are often arguing about a strawman manchurian imposter of a free market system. In fact, neither of the two parties really embraces it or accepts it. One wants to make the state capitalism more fair or at least bend it to government control and the other wants to use the control of government to hand out political favors to corporations and protect certain assets such as overseas markets and oil.


Did the US ever have a truly free An-Cap market?

[randolphfuller]

In his debates with H.G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton complained that Wells often indulged in lengthy and scorching denunciations os "our modrn capitalist industrial system." He then asked "Who, but a devil from hell has ever defended it?"

[tmosley]

The "Wild Wild West" was pretty close to a free market.

The problem with having a free market is that any amount of involuntary force will make it a not-free market, so by the strictest standard, there never has been a free market. However, if you filter out the noise of small time thuggery, then The West had it, and I believe Scotland did as well during the Scottish Free Banking period. I can't say for sure, but bank freedom is generally indicative of a non-interventionist government.

[Carson]

We sort of had a free market system when I was a kid. The change we had then was the silver in the coins.

Now we have a Stealth Socialist market system. No matter where your Aunt Martha hides the sugar bowl with her money in it, the government has a way of getting to it and sucking the value out of her savings for their social programs and agenda.

See how the value of or currency has fallen since the fifties and sixties when we used real money?



You can see that before then during times of war the government introduced fake money into the system and the value fell.

This is basically how they have been doing it to us.

[Jordan]

^ Even if we returned to a commodity backed currency we'd still have a long way to go to establish a free market.

End the Fed is a popular meme, and for good reason, but its not the end all solution. Not by a mile.

[slothman]

If there have never been any free markets then how can free marketers say if socialism is bad without a baseline?

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

Who needs free markets when you can vote GOP?

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