What is important to acknowledge is that the free market solution isn’t without suffering. This aspect is too often minimized. Too often the freedom lovers ignore life’s reality and this just adds fuel to the idea that we are detached from reality. If you look at the leftist arguement in this thread he rightly points out that there will be excesses in the free market, large companies will try and create monopolies and we can sit back in the macro sense and say yeah but it wont last in the long run but the long run on the micro level that could be most of your life and could destroy your livelihood and your family or whole host of other negative offshoots. These little micro destructions if you will lay the seeds for advocating government.
Yes, that is the point there will be criminals and these crimes won’t always be immediately punished and they will do real damage. So by your own definition a free market is impossible because it would assume that which man universally is incapable of which is perfection. There will be criminals and there will be times when the line between criminal activity and freedom will be blurred so an immediate remedy will not be apparent. The point being that the free market despite these human failings is superior to the government making decisions.
Your last statement is exactly what I am talking about you claim not to be utopian yet your society could be nothing other than that, criminals are inherently part of the system because humans are imperfect.
What suffering are you talking about? Being human? “free market solution isn’t without suffering” as compared to what? In my opinion, you make no valid point.
What “excesses” do you have in mind exactly? The only ones I can think off would be a result of entrepreneurial errors, which the market efficiently regulates against by profit & loss.
It’s almost as if you are trying to understand markets through the lens of a Marxist, while still advocating for them. Nobody will sit back and say “it won’t last in the long run” . Nobody will force you to patronize any firm or business. Your analysis is simply false. No, you cannot understand markets through the lens of a Marxist, because that is not how markets work.
By my own definition, a free market is possible since I don’t assume any such utopian vision of “perfection”. If I did, I would not mention “mechanism to deal with criminals” (Defense agencies, courts, etc…) and I would not use the term “outlawed” for criminal activity. On the contrary, I implied that the free market would give rise such services of law enforcement and defense agencies.
You misunderstand the concept of a free market completely. A free market is precisely a system that deals with human imperfection. Do not take these Marxists seriously as if their claims have any merit. They don’t.
Its funny. No one picked up on the hint? JP? Could that be JP Morgan and the Standard Oil of Ohio Trust; currently known as bp/amaco, shell, etc. This was a real situation that developed long before the FED, income tax, or the New Deal. It was not the government that allowed Morgan to monopolize the american economy. In fact, it was the Teddy Roosevelt progressives that broke up the trust. (Your more libertarian presidents in fact supported the large firms that virtually controlled the market.)
In fact, it is because of these more libertarian policies that we could only break the trust and not the control. The Morgan family still controls these companies, as well as having a hand in the member banks of the FED.
The definition of the state, at least the way i learned it, is simply our system of laws and policies, our established state religion (secularism), and our military structure (tragically a standing army). This wouldn’t change in a libertarian country, it would still be the state. The State = soveirgnty of a people or territory. Unless you argue we should get rid of our soveirgnty, then your not arguing against the state.
And in case you think warfare only happens because of the state; research the Mundurucu of Brazil. They war with each other for nothing other than that their ancestors warred with each other.
Its a simple fact; the strength of the state is directly proportional to the growth of civilization. To weaken our system of enforcing our laws and contracts will take us back to tribalism and aggrarianism.
Maybe if more of you were realists like MaxLiberty, people would take you a little more seriously.
Wait, thats why people make governments, because they are that way and they want to exploit. And anarchistic policy, with no government, will make this unprofitable.
But governments are comprised partly people that kill others
Strawman. That is not the only reason for war. The state just makes it profitable.
Correlation != causitation. While it may have followed that trend (correlation), it does not imply a causitation.
But government by definition creates monopoly, even with anti-trust.
Nope. It was the use of government they did not support. They may have felt bad about the situation.
More liberterian poicies? Correlation != causitation.
That is not the state. And what is the meaning of soveirgnty? People can choose to create a “soveirgn nation” as long as others can contractually enter and exit at will.
If a nation declares and is recognized in its soveirgnty, and creates a system of enforcing peace, laws, and contracts; that is a state. Wether or not it is anarchistic.
Right, enforcing peace sounds like an oxymoron. But only an oxy moron would think that is so. You and your brother are fighting over something stupid and your father says “settle down or im whoopin both of you.” Boom, enforcing peace. No violence involved. You call it coercion, and it is. But quit fightin with your brother over who gets to play with the GI Joe today.
Actually if I recall correctly, wasn’t one of Rothbard’s books showing how Teddy Roosevelt was in league with JP Morgan and that is why he went after Morgan’s competition, Rockefeller.
So we ought to grant them a monopoly in certain markets, like law and order? Maybe it’s statist policy that should not be taken seriously until it realises the above.
Indeed. People who enjoy a monopoly over the provision of law and order, who call themselves the “government”.
What you don’t understand is how power works in any society. Your belief that the rich and powerful in a free society will not at times use that power in ways contrary to a free market are misguided. The rich and the powerful have the ability to committ crimes and get away with them. The everything works out in the long run thinking is great for philosophy but on the street, what happens in the short term really does matter and to casually act as if it doesn’t is a mistake. The left feeds on this short term suffering and its real, not something imagined. I am no advocate of the state in any incarnation but in general people prefer action over the inaction of letting things sort themselves out. We as people who want greater freedom need to be more aware of that in our discussions and deal more directly with that issue.
The point is simple, the short term matters to people. The idea that everything will be ok in the long run is fine but people do make decisions based on the short term and to pretend only the long term matters is misguided.
What you don’t understand is how the free market economy works, which is why you keep repeating this stuff like a broken record.
Until you become more willing to familiarize yourself with how the market works (or what it is, for that matter), such back and fourth exchanges are pointless.
Did you even read my responses to you? I never implied that anything just “works in the long run”.
Well, I wish you were an advocate of the state. With freedom advocates like you, who needs Socialists?
It’s better to learn about your product before trying to sell it.