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Thread: Why government should always have more power than private business.

  1. #151
    Quote Originally Posted by Jovan Galtic View Post
    Most of his writings were failures of his brain. He got his basic premises wrong and because of that everything else was wrong.

    Google "Yuri Maltsev".
    Once again! Most of Karl Marx writing were of the Failures of Capitalism. Which he got largly right. His solution left a lot to be desired and many eastern European $#@!ries did not implement properly what he wrote either - probably the one you came from.

    Marx did mosty of his writings in London at the Library in the British Museum. He is buried in London. The free thinking British said you can stay here and write what you like. But they never took up his solutions.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)



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  3. #152
    Quote Originally Posted by VoluntaryAmerican View Post
    Your first assumption is not true; "I am unable to participate in decisions regarding the operations of the business." Many times, in fact, innovation in business is created by the worker, the person who does the process over and over. In Wealth of Nations, Smith uses the example of a factory worker who works in a pin factory, doing this process repeatedly he eventually finds ways to make pins faster by creating short cuts in the current system.

    Let me also ask: do workers deserve equal power to control a company they have invested zero capital to finance? Would this business practice be effective?

    In your second paragraph you compare yourself to a slave, but that's not true either. You could start your own business, you could become a homeless person, you could save capital, you could learn a new skill making yourself more competitive as a laborer. In short, life is full of options, you could do a million different things with your time - that's the beauty of life - the beauty of the free market.

    In your fifth paragraph you show a misunderstanding of how "wages" work. To start, forget the word "wage", a wage is merely a price for labor. The price of labor is determined by the productivity of the job's impact on the market. So let's say the factory workers make an average of $20 an hour and this employer cuts that in half to $10. He would be underpaying his labor - the best workers would leave and find new employment for a fair price - others may form a union - others may stay but their work performance will be poor.

    As you can see, this is not in the employers best interests.

    Let me ask some questions about your purchasing power argument; How are we to know when labor does have enough to buy back the product? Or when they have too much?

    You can't mean: a factory worker who makes cheap dresses should get enough to buy back cheap dresses; the maker of Ford cars should get enough to buy back Ford cars, similarly should the worker at a Cadillac plant get enough to buy a Cadillac?

    You can never understand the Economy - because you have only one focus - workers. If we try to run an economy for the benefit of one group, we will injure the whole economy. This is what governments often do, make regulations that benefit one class or one industry at the detriment of all others within the economy.


    I suggest you read "Economics in One Lesson" (Free PDF online) ... or just read the chapter "The Function of Profits". You have a serious misunderstanding of what the economic purpose of profits are.


    DEBUNKED
    First off, thanks for a legitimate response. I suppose that we'll now continue the conversation from here, as I cannot respond to every individual post since my last (but of course, people are free to go back and read my other responses.)

    "Let me also ask: do workers deserve equal power to control a company they have invested zero capital to finance? Would this business practice be effective?"

    If we lived in a free, voluntary society, sure, someone should not have the right to take what belongs to others (you're asking a question that is dependent on society as it is today, whereas I am proposing a different kind of society, so this question is slightly missing the point). However, this simply is not the case. What is the case in today's world, and has been the case historically, is that a super-wealthy financial and political elite emerges by sheer virtue of claiming the means of production for themselves (the factories, fields, farms, offices, etc) and forcing everyone else (who do not own capital) to sell their labor in exchange for wages. Essentially (and what many people here seem to miss), these people have no choice but to sell their labor and time and body and mind to somebody else. And of course, you don't get the full value of your labor back, or else there would be no profit for the owner. So while your question proposes an interesting thought regarding a matter of principle, it is still trapped within the confines of society as it is today. So, for example, if we lived in a society in which the community decided how to invest extra capital, of course the workers would deserve equal power to control the company: they are the ones actually doing the work, after all!

    "In your second paragraph you compare yourself to a slave, but that's not true either. You could start your own business, you could become a homeless person, you could save capital, you could learn a new skill making yourself more competitive as a laborer. In short, life is full of options, you could do a million different things with your time - that's the beauty of life - the beauty of the free market."

    Again, this sounds great but is just not true in reality. These options are not really available to most people. For one, something like 9 out of 10 new businesses fail because nobody can compete with giant corporations. And few people have time or money to learn new skills (if you're working 50 hours a week to barely scrape by and raising three kids, how the hell are you supposed to find time or money to just learn new skills?). Also, for the most part, almost nobody in America "moves up" as a result of their own "hard work." In fact, most people are "moving down" right now into lower classes. We cannot seriously say that this because everyone is becoming lazier. The only "beauty" of the "free market" is that it's incredibly rigged against the "little guy" in favor of a wealthy and powerful elite. It has always been that way.

    "The price of labor is determined by the productivity of the job's impact on the market."

    Here, again, your response is trapped in the framework of the market, which is the very thing I'm critiquing (at least, at the moment) so this isn't really saying much. I could just as easily say the price of labor is determined by whatever the king says it is, or whatever the community decides is fair, or whatever the workers themselves vote on, etc etc. See where I'm getting at?

    You can't mean: a factory worker who makes cheap dresses should get enough to buy back cheap dresses; the maker of Ford cars should get enough to buy back Ford cars, similarly should the worker at a Cadillac plant get enough to buy a Cadillac?

    That's sorta what I'm saying. If it were not for the split of profits between the owners and the workers, the workers would get paid for what they produce. If you build a car and sell it for $5000, you get $5000. If you build a car for a capitalist and he sells it for $5000, you do not get $5000, but whatever the capitalist says is fair, or whatever the "market" says your labor is worth (which, again, is completely arbitrary). But ultimately, whose labor built the car?

    "You can never understand the Economy - because you have only one focus - workers. If we try to run an economy for the benefit of one group, we will injure the whole economy. This is what governments often do, make regulations that benefit one class or one industry at the detriment of all others within the economy."

    Again, if we lived in a society in which nobody could claim the means of production all for themselves and force everyone else to sell their labor or starve, this would not be an issue, i.e., there would not be a split between super-wealthy financial elites (today's owner/investor class) and the mostly poor and powerless workers (today's working/middle class.) There would just be people, voluntarily producing and sharing as equals.

    ___

    So back to my original point. I think I've made it perfectly clear now that there is no such thing as a "free market," that there never has been one, and that there never can be. The "free market" is an ideology used to justify illegitimate power structures centered around the private ownership of the means of production: the "free market" is always rigged in favor of the powerful. The same people who claim to support free-market principles almost never live by those principles themselves (just look at the number of Fortune 500 companies that are completely dependent on the government for subsidies, or tax advantages, or public schools to train their workers, or a powerful military to defend their interests abroad, or to protect their products through tariffs, the list goes on and on and on...)

    Every time the community seeks to exercise its power over a private business, to protect workers from abuse, to protect the environment, to make sure the owners aren't cheating, to make sure they don't export all the jobs the community needs to survive, they cry "But the free market! You can't tell us what to do!" This is why we need a strong government: it helps to balance out an incredibly unequal society (in terms of money and power). In government, we get to vote as equals, whereas in the economy, there is no democracy at all, only authority flowing from the top down.



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  5. #153
    Quote Originally Posted by The_Honorable_Doug View Post
    There are too many responses here for me to reply to each individual one, but keep this in mind:

    The contract between worker and owner in this country is, nine times out of ten, not voluntary. You think the single mother working at Wal-Mart for the minimum wage at 3 am wants to do that? Of course not. The owners (the Walton family) were born into a position of massive wealth and power, and the poor workers were born into a position of poverty and powerlessness. We do not get a "fair shot" in this country, not even remotely, and I think you'd have to be a fool (or so privileged you can't see beyond it) to argue otherwise.

    Also, the list of "threats, theft, coercion, and guns" basically sums up what the owners do to preserve their power (see: every labor strike in American history, the corporate control of government, the media, etc.)
    You have a point. Completely wrong solution though.
    I am the spoon.

  6. #154
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    Its a bit ad hominem, but Karl Marx never worked a day in his life. He came from a wealthy family but still managed to reduce himself to poverty.
    Marx was supported by rich people who admired his writings. Engles was one. A German textile company owner who also had a factory in Manchester in England. Engles wrote as well and his observations on the dire poverty on the workers in Manchester at the time is eye opening. He lived with an Irish lady, Mary Byrne who took him around the city.

    These poor working people, in all countries, were far better off in the period before the Industrial Revolution living in agriculture. The likes of Engles sought an answer to the new industrial order and massive poverty they saw as the fallout - in a society that created masses of wealth and technical advancement like nothing before it. They supported Marx and his research.

    Others were shocked at the poverty they saw in a era of massive wealth creation and wondered why this could happen. Henry George was one. George would have spats with Marx. George came up with a different solution to Marx, which took the positives of Capitalism and led to Geonomics.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  7. #155
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    Aw come on man.......Free money sounds so much better than hard work and low pay
    Yes, unearned income from land rents and increased values of land. They get rich in their sleep for doing nothing.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  8. #156
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    Marx was supported by rich people who admired his writings. Engles was one. A German textile company owner who also had a factory in Manchester in England. Engles wrote as well and his observations on the dire poverty on the workers in Manchester at the time is eye opening. He lived with an Irish lady, Mary Byrne who took him around the city.

    These poor working people, in all countries, were far better off in the period before the Industrial Revolution living in agriculture. The likes of Engles sought an answer to the new industrial order and massive poverty they saw as the fallout - in a society that created masses of wealth and technical advancement like nothing before it. They supported Marx and his research.

    Others were shocked at the poverty they saw in a era of massive wealth creation and wondered why this could happen. Henry George was one. George would have spats with Marx. George came up with a different solution to Marx, which took the positives of Capitalism and led to Geonomics.
    The were all better off than the Taiwanese who had their villages seized under the LVT Reforms of the KMT invaders.
    In New Zealand:
    The Coastguard is a Charity
    Air Traffic Control is a private company run on user fees
    The DMV is a private non-profit
    Rescue helicopters and ambulances are operated by charities and are plastered with corporate logos
    The agriculture industry has zero subsidies
    5% of the national vote, gets you 5 seats in Parliament
    A tax return has 4 fields
    Business licenses aren't a thing
    Prostitution is legal
    We have a constitutional right to refuse any type of medical care

  9. #157
    Quote Originally Posted by The_Honorable_Doug View Post
    You're already distracting from my original point. Of course there are an exceptional few who "work their way up" but for most people this is not a possible option. And besides, where would we all go? There is limited room "on top" in a capitalist society.
    Where is this hypothetical capitalist society?
    I am the spoon.

  10. #158
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    The free-market is based on the three factors of production:

    LAND - all land and its resources
    CAPITAL - all man made things, inc money
    LABOR - human mental and physical effort

    When the above runs free and unrigged, the free-market works brilliantly.

    Corporations were developed to counter the free-market and corner it.

    Reagan & Thatcher rigged the LABOR aspect of the market in driving its costs down. They off-shored manufacturing to the Far East. People were earning so little because of their obsessions, there was not enough money in people's wages to keep the economy moving enough, so they relaxed credit so they could buy the goods....then the consequences were dire .....and and later came the Credit Crunch.

    Obama is rigging LABOR in the market right now, backed by the Republicans. Look at this:



    Geonomics encourages the free-market.
    Tell me how FDR made everything great.
    I am the spoon.

  11. #159
    Quote Originally Posted by SewrRatt View Post
    This is a troll thread, move along people, nothing to see here.
    At least it's a change from the norm. These trolls aren't pretending to be Paul supporters.
    I am the spoon.

  12. #160
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    You sound like you are in La-La land not the real world. Government is there. Get used to it. Use the democratic system to manipulate it.

    Anarchy is not going to happen.
    The democratic system is why we're in this mess. The U.S. was founded as a REPUBLIC, not a democracy.
    I am the spoon.



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  14. #161
    What about folks who are extremely skilled and talented but have near zero ability to sell themselves or type up resumes or conduct powerful interviews?

    Perhaps the system is biased?
    I'm a moderator, and I'm glad to help. But I'm an individual -- my words come from me. Any idiocy within should reflect on me, not Ron Paul, and not Ron Paul Forums.

  15. #162
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    The were all better off than the Taiwanese who had their villages seized under the LVT Reforms of the KMT invaders.
    You must stop making things up. Please focus. Read Engles on the poverty of the people of Manchester. Which was similar to all industrialized countries at the time.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  16. #163
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    Yes, unearned income from land rents and increased values of land. They get rich in their sleep for doing nothing.
    No.......Pay attention;

    "They" earn dividends from land ownership, land "They" invested in with money "They" earned...

    "They" must practice good stewardship in order to see returns on "Their" investment..

    You too could own land.........Or not, it's up to you.

  17. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    You must stop making things up. Please focus. Read Engles on the poverty of the people of Manchester. Which was similar to all industrialized countries at the time.
    Read your own Geonomists on the consequences of LVT reforms. Proponents of Geonomics list these things but consider them good because Tribal people are not fully utilising their land, so it is good when they lose out to people who can use the land better.

    Besides its not like the Tribal people owned the land they were living for centuries or millennia. You can't 'own' land right. That's why you say it can't be seized.

    It just gets re-allocated to more efficient users or people with more efficient ties to the government.
    In New Zealand:
    The Coastguard is a Charity
    Air Traffic Control is a private company run on user fees
    The DMV is a private non-profit
    Rescue helicopters and ambulances are operated by charities and are plastered with corporate logos
    The agriculture industry has zero subsidies
    5% of the national vote, gets you 5 seats in Parliament
    A tax return has 4 fields
    Business licenses aren't a thing
    Prostitution is legal
    We have a constitutional right to refuse any type of medical care

  18. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    Yes, unearned income from land rents and increased values of land. They get rich in their sleep for doing nothing.
    The rich get poor in their sleep if they do nothing.

    Just like Marx. He never bothered to earn one single penny. Just watched his children die.

    That's what happens when you do nothing.

    You know what happens the moment of a BIG stock market crash? The rich start killing themselves. The lose everything. They jump from buildings.

    The poor barely feel the crash unless the government intervenes and makes it last for years instead of weeks. Speculation should only hurt the rich, but bad economic intervention makes it hurt the poor.
    In New Zealand:
    The Coastguard is a Charity
    Air Traffic Control is a private company run on user fees
    The DMV is a private non-profit
    Rescue helicopters and ambulances are operated by charities and are plastered with corporate logos
    The agriculture industry has zero subsidies
    5% of the national vote, gets you 5 seats in Parliament
    A tax return has 4 fields
    Business licenses aren't a thing
    Prostitution is legal
    We have a constitutional right to refuse any type of medical care

  19. #166
    Quote Originally Posted by The_Honorable_Doug View Post
    When you say "more government," what you're really saying is "more community." You believe that businessmen and investors should be allowed to just do whatever they want, regardless of what the community says (even if they say, "Hey! We don't abuse our workers in this country!"

    Maybe if the businessmen don't want the community telling them what to do, maybe THEY should go somewhere else! Hahahaha!
    I'm sure in this extremely long thread somebody has already said this, but the businesses do go somewhere else under your scenario which drives unemployment up even hire giving you less options. Oh yeah, and as that happens the businesses that are left inevitably have more power. That can extract more and more concessions from the community that thought it was in "control". It happens all the time. Unions push one manufacturer out, unemployment skyrockets, then city/state leaders bend over backwards to offer "incentives" for some new manufacturer to come it. The workers end up being "slaves" (since you put it that way) to the unions, the city and the employers.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  20. #167
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    The rich get poor in their sleep if they do nothing.

    Just like Marx.
    Stop banging on about Marx you half-wit! An obsessive. David Harvey gave a lecture on how we ended up in the financial situation we are in. Nothing to do with Marx. It was factual observation by Harvey.
    Last edited by EcoWarrier; 08-07-2012 at 06:17 AM.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  21. #168
    Quote Originally Posted by idiom View Post
    You can't 'own' land right. That's why you say it can't be seized.
    Land is seized. It was seized by many means - for private gain.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)



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  23. #169
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    No.......Pay attention;

    "They" earn dividends from land ownership, land "They" invested in with money "They" earned...
    You invest in productive activities that hopefully give returns. I see no production in appropriating into private pockets commonly created wealth that soaked into the land crystallizing as values. That is "unearned income". If you didn't know now you do. I never made it up.

    Find out the difference between speculation and investment.
    Last edited by EcoWarrier; 08-07-2012 at 06:15 AM.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  24. #170
    Quote Originally Posted by nayjevin View Post
    What about folks who are extremely skilled and talented but have near zero ability to sell themselves or type up resumes or conduct powerful interviews?

    Perhaps the system is biased?
    I had to learn how to sell my skill and talent. This gave me further skills.

    Rev9
    Drain the swamp - BIG DOG
    http://mindreleaselabs.com/
    Seeking work on Apps, Games, Art based projects

  25. #171
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    Stop banging on about Marx you half-wit! An obsessive. David Harvey gave a lecture on how we ended up in the financial situation we are in. Nothing to do with Marx. It was factual observation by Harvey.
    Stop defending his sorry, lay about, couch potato, armchair philosopher's ass you quarter wit and folks won't bring up his utter failings as a human being, father and theorist.. Probably made a $#@!ty spouse too.

    Rev9
    Drain the swamp - BIG DOG
    http://mindreleaselabs.com/
    Seeking work on Apps, Games, Art based projects

  26. #172
    Let's see if I can follow your theory here;

    You consider land to be "commonly created wealth".....right?

    Before I even ask about "soaking or crystallization" how about explaining your view of land?


    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    You invest in productive activities that hopefully give returns. I see no production in appropriating into private pockets commonly created wealth that soaked into the land crystallizing as values. That is "unearned income". If you didn't know now you do. I never made it up.

    Find out the difference between speculation and investment.

  27. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    Let's see if I can follow your theory here;

    You consider land to be "commonly created wealth".....right?

    Before I even ask about "soaking or crystallization" how about explaining your view of land?
    Don't bother. He thinks that we need taxes and tries to rationalize justification for them. I think in the other thread he claimed we should spend on welfare just as much as we do today. He thinks civilization can not exist unless government pays for infrastructure.

    As far as his view on land he thinks that just because you live near a community you owe it for them not looting and pillaging you. He does not understand that every member of the community while benefiting from other working and living nearby brings the same benefit by doing the same thing.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cowlesy View Post
    Americans in general are jedi masters of blaming every other person.

  28. #174
    I'm hoping he'll see the foolishness of his positions.........then again.......

    Quote Originally Posted by silverhandorder View Post
    Don't bother. He thinks that we need taxes and tries to rationalize justification for them. I think in the other thread he claimed we should spend on welfare just as much as we do today. He thinks civilization can not exist unless government pays for infrastructure.

    As far as his view on land he thinks that just because you live near a community you owe it for them not looting and pillaging you. He does not understand that every member of the community while benefiting from other working and living nearby brings the same benefit by doing the same thing.

  29. #175
    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    Let's see if I can follow your theory here; You consider land to be "commonly created wealth".....right?
    Land is given by nature NOT by man. Land is NOT commonly created. Land and its resources are Commonwealth. Simple. Make a washing machine (CAPITAL made by man) and man owns it. Land ownership is "title", a set of rights. You do not actually "own" the land. You need title of keep others off the land while you use it. The values in the land are created by community economic actity, not the landower. That is economic fact. That is how the land values came about, they never came from the sky. Your house does not improve in value. The house (CAPITAL) is the wood and bricks and depreciates over time. The land appreciates.

    You need to learn more about basic economics.
    Last edited by EcoWarrier; 08-07-2012 at 06:58 AM.
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  30. #176
    Quote Originally Posted by silverhandorder View Post
    Don't bother. He thinks that we need taxes
    He does? He wants Income, Sales and property taxes removed. All taxes on production and trade.

    In your Utopia of zero taxes, how are common services going to be funded?
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)



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  32. #177
    Quote Originally Posted by EcoWarrier View Post
    He does? He wants Income, Sales and property taxes removed. All taxes on production and trade.

    In your Utopia of zero taxes, how are common services going to be funded?
    Use fees like any other common service.
    Quote Originally Posted by Cowlesy View Post
    Americans in general are jedi masters of blaming every other person.

  33. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by silverhandorder View Post
    Use fees like any other common service.
    So every street has a coin machine and turnstyle as you can walk down it? The army? Door to door collections? You pay the police for each call out?

    Get out of La-La land!!!!!
    “I have made speeches by the yard on the subject
    of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter
    I am of that policy.”

    - Winston Churchill


    The only war Winston Churchill ever lost was
    against the British landlords.

    - Fred Harrison (economic writer)

  34. #179
    I would appreciate it if Doug or someone else would define what "Market Society" is and enumerate the points of contact it has with "Free Market".

    In the meantime here is an article that seems appropriate:

    Mistaken Identity
    By Art Carden


    It is always the fashion among many intellectuals to blame society’s ills on the free market. One college newspaper recently argued that the market is "The God That Sucked." The course summaries in my university’s catalog, the themes of the lecture series, and the editorial content of the student newspapers suggest that many students and faculty would agree.

    Popular contempt for the market is distressing. Few institutions are so universally reviled, and perhaps fewer institutions are so universally misunderstood. This misunderstanding can be dangerous: the radicals who protest so vehemently against the workings of the free market rarely understand that they advocate strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs.

    To borrow from Robert Frost, we should consider how the heavens go before we try to change the world. In other words, we must consider what is before we talk about what ought to be.

    Many disagreements have their genesis in misunderstanding and equivocation. So let’s define the term "free market." Dictionary.com defines a "market" as "an opportunity to buy or sell" and a "free market" as "an economic market in which supply and demand are not regulated or are regulated with only minor restrictions." "Free markets" and "capitalism" are practically synonymous, and George Reisman defines capitalism eloquently:

    "Capitalism is a social system based on private ownership of the means of production. It is characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest under freedom and it rests on a foundation of the cultural influence of reason. Based on its foundations and essential nature, capitalism is further characterized by saving and capital accumulation, exchange and money, financial self-interest and the profit motive, the freedoms of economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress, and a harmony of the material self-interests of all the individuals who participate in it."

    Thus, we can define a "free market" as a social system based on the voluntary exchange of property rights. And yet the "free market" is almost universally reviled within the academy.

    Many popular criticisms of the market are so common as to warrant the charge of cliché (critics of capitalism might say "axiom"). They can be distilled into a few broad propositions, which we consider here. They are: the market is antisocial; the market tramples human rights; the market is the enemy of the environment; and the market is the weapon of the rich against the poor. Let’s consider each in turn.

    One of the more popular myths about the market economy is that it necessarily entails a Hobbesian "war of all against all," a man-eat-man world in which we all compete in a zero-sum scramble for resources. A recent op-ed in the Washington University Student Life posited that the "apocryphal idea of [the market’s] reality . . . may lead the entire species to self destruction." That’s scary stuff. It follows, then, that the market must be warlike: if resources are finite and everyone lives to consume, conflict—and war—must be the natural result.

    But conflict and war are the very antithesis of free-market principles. The essence of market exchange is cooperation: two parties exchange goods and services, and both are enriched as a result. You pay Wal-Mart for a necktie. Wal-Mart buys the necktie from the manufacturer. The manufacturer pays for the labor and capital necessary to produce the necktie. Everybody wins.

    The reader should also note that people never start wars of subjugation to extend the voluntary exchange of goods and services. In fact, many wars occur for fundamentally anticapitalist reasons: namely, trade disputes. We would do well to consider the wisdom of Frédéric Bastiat, who noted that when goods don’t cross borders, armies will.

    Another popular criticism of the free market is that it tramples human rights. Slavery, racism, sexism, and "sweatshops" are the children of capitalism; therefore, the market economy should be overthrown post haste.

    First, slavery is anti-market by definition: free markets are guided by the principle of voluntarism. Second, racism and sexism are difficult to sustain in competitive markets: no matter how much a certain employer hates blacks, women, Jews, homosexuals, etc., consumers are rarely willing to pay the price premium that would be necessary to allow them to indulge their taste for discrimination. The market has been profoundly benevolent to even the most oppressed minorities. In his masterful Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865–1914, Robert Higgs chronicled the spectacular gains the sons and daughters of slaves made when they were allowed to participate in the market economy.

    Third, we have to ask two questions when we consider the plight of "sweatshop" laborers. First, why are working conditions so wretched? Second, what are these workers’ next best alternatives? Working conditions in the third world are wretched precisely because many third-world countries have only recently begun to adopt the institutions that characterize the market economies of the west. Workers’ next best alternatives are often appalling: many children leave lives of crime, prostitution, and starvation to work in sweatshops.

    If we close the sweatshops, they will likely return to crime, prostitution, and starvation.

    It is also popular to charge that the market is the enemy of the environment. This is also untrue; environmental degradation occurs when property rights are poorly specified or enforced. If anyone or anything has failed in this respect, it is the state. There is ample evidence for this in former communist countries: many lakes and streams in the former Soviet Union are so polluted as to be unusable.

    The market economy is also accused of being the ultimate weapon of rich against poor. Capitalist "meritocracy" is responsible for widespread poverty, rampant inequality, and Big Business’ choke-hold on the world. While these challenges to capitalist institutions make for intriguing rhetoric, they are also false.

    Today’s poor countries were poor long before modern liberal market economies developed in Europe and North America; therefore, we cannot blame capitalism for poverty. Many critics also point to the unequal distribution of wealth in the United States as evidence of capitalism’s evils, but this overlooks two crucial points.

    The first is income mobility: someone born into poverty in the US stands a very good chance of moving up in the world. Second, while the distribution of money incomes is relatively unequal, the distribution of access to goods of similar technological composition has narrowed considerably. For most of world history, the difference between rich and poor was the difference between who ate and who starved. In today’s market econ-omies, the difference between the super-rich and the poor is the difference between who drives a Dodge Viper and who drives an ‘87 Chevy Cavalier.

    The reader should note that the power of "big business" is overstated. A unique feature of capitalism is that the greatest rewards go to those who cater to the common man. Consider Wal-Mart, a favorite whipping boy among left-wing intellectuals: Wal-Mart’s clientele consists almost exclusively of the middle- and lower-class. Capitalism generates fantastic wealth, and the benefits accrue almost entirely to the least of these among us.

    Ludwig von Mises put it succinctly in a series of lectures which were published posthumously as Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow. He notes that "this is the fundamental principle of capitalism as it exists today in all those countries in which there is a highly developed system of mass production: Big business . . . produces almost exclusively to satisfy the wants of the masses." The "power relationship" of which Marxists are so fond is precisely the opposite of that which is most often supposed: consumers, not producers, are the masters of the dance.

    Nonetheless, enemies of the market argue that the only reason people put up with market economies is because they are forced to. The evidence of twentieth-century immigration doesn’t support the hypothesis. Thousands died trying to cross into free West Germany and South Korea, and there was very little traffic in the opposite direction. Similarly, thousands of Cubans have risked life and limb to come to America. Few—if any—have braved the ocean on a homemade raft to seek a better way of life in Cuba.

    Finally, it is deficient scholarship to merely point out the litany of crimes that the market (supposedly) commits and suggest that it has "failed" in any meaningful way. One must propose a superior alternative. In this case, both theory and history are firmly on the side of the free market. Mises and Hayek demonstrated that rational calculation is impossible without private ownership of the means of production. This isn’t to say that a "socialist economy" is inefficient—it is quite literally an oxymoron. Our experience with radical revolutions and planned economies in the twentieth century is hardly encouraging: in the name of "the people," Che Guevara killed thousands, Hitler millions, Stalin and Mao tens of millions.

    It may be fashionable to blame the market economy for all of society’s ills, but this blame is undeserved and many scholars’ faith in alternatives to the market is misplaced. No socialist regime has ever held a free election, and no free market has ever produced a death camp. Popular academic opinions to the contrary, the market works. And we can take that to the bank.

    Art Carden is a graduate student in economics at Washington University in St. Louis
    Last edited by Len Larson; 08-07-2012 at 07:36 AM.

  35. #180
    Quote Originally Posted by The_Honorable_Doug View Post
    I, lacking any way to provide for myself otherwise
    This is where you chose to be a slave.
    Definition of political insanity: Voting for the same people expecting different results.

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