As of late, this guy’s blog has been “plaguing” the anarchist sub-reddit, with (sadly) little to no refutation on his bold claims & his own ideological bias found in his posts (he appears to be a communist of some sort).
It goes without saying that I think more of us here could really be useful on the front @ reddit in the libertarian & anarchist sub-reddits, both of which are risking lapsing into either minarchism or socialist-anarchism bias, respectively.
I figured I’d also post this for some hanging fruit, but figured it would never hurt to link to yet another bold claim that the “free-market is useless” to keep everyone on their toes.
I think he’s somewhat correct in addressing the assumption’s on how humans would act in a free-market, but I think he get’s way to hung up in empiricism as a means of providing a blueprint of how markets would act (which seems to contradict his objection to axioms assuming humans would act in certain ways, imo).
One very annoying thing in this guy’s blog is his assumptive packaging of concepts with other concepts, such as the free-market somehow being inherently utilitarian (as if, again, the market has some sort of consciousness or “will”, as if it were a living being, or some abstract nonsense), or that capitalism somehow always produces wage-slavery (a “classic” entry can be found here).
Further annoying is that he doesn’t bother to provide more than link-backs to his own entries to provide any sense of “evidence” for his argument, however, but it is hardly surprising.
Well part of the problem is that he didn’t properly identify exactly what “the free market concept” is. So in order to meaningfully engage this, the degree of misunderstanding or misrepresentation about what’s actually in question would need to be addressed.
How does one “empirically” prove such a thing from without the mind of the individuals involved in a transaction? Answer: they can’t - except when they delude themselves into thinking they somehow know the preferences of individuals better than they do. Therefore, all that matters are their demonstrated preferences. If a party consents to a transaction it is becayse they perceive benefit in doing so, i.e. prefer this to abstaining from taking action. I say until he offers actual arguments we cannot and should not trust a single thing he says. Free markets are voluntary exchanges of private property. It has nothing to do with “utils” or any such nonsense. As for language or mathematics who knows what he is talking about…Sounds like an ignorant rant about a package deal concept.
It has been demonstrated though, and as such is more than an assertion. He can contend that the demonstration is not sufficient or that it is fallacious, but then he must support that.
Now, I don’t really understand what he means by “based on an assumption of how reality…works”, Misesian economics demonstrates that a free market brings about optimal results in the sense that everybody will be satisfying their wants that are ranked most highly, on the other hand, individuals are precluded from doing so as a result of state intervention. Likewise, as Ludwig von Mises demonstrated (and in his tradition so has Yeager) the free market allows for the most extensive and intensive division of labour and accumulation of capital and is therefore most conducive to the production of wealth. Moreover, any intervention on behalf of the state cannot rational allocate resources (neither intratemporally, nor intertemporally) in an attempt to satisfy the desires of consumers because by definition it circumvents the price system, to the extent that intervention takes place calculational chaos will follow, as will the business cycle is the interest rate in the market for loanable funds is distorted
This demonstrates does not “assume” anything more than that resources, both human and natural, are not evenly distributed.
Only, the market is not a result, it is a process. The “free” implies that it is not impaired by any other institution (such as the state).
I don’t think this idiot knows the subject over which he feels compelled to talk. Perhaps he’d do well to read about Austrian welfare economics, or epistemology, before making empty statements about the free market.
Exactly, most of his posts follow a similar pattern of decrying something, utilizing definitions & concepts for his argument, but convinently never actually getting down to defining his terms, concepts, etc. that would supposedly make the typical argument stronger.
It’s seems almost immune from intelligent analysis, methinks, without it falling apart.
The idea is that the exact definition of “Free markets” in this instance does not matter. I am trying to point out that any definition based on particular kind of assumptions is useless.
For more dialogue, please comment on my site itself, I’d be more than glad to explain and discuss, but I’d prefer it to be in a place where future visitors might see the antilogue.
Second, because it doesn’t fit the criteria for my term. For example, Yahoo reports about 23,000 backlinks to your domain. They are almost all exclusively from the blogosphere. I would hazard a guess, that if we removed free blog hosts, and your own backlinks from comments, You probably have less than 1500 backlinks from sites where someone pays for the pleasure of being able to link to your work.
You’ve tried the groupthink out before IIRC on the Mises blog. Instead of complaining about groupthink, you have challenges and refutations in this thread. Answer them.
But I find it amusing that the only legitimate links for you are those coming from commercial sites. It’s telling really.
As for the challenges and refutations in this thread, this is what I said in my original post. There aren’t any. And any such are much better posted in my blog in the first place.
Which is garbage. It gives you leeway to attack anything under the sun. And you didn’t make your case anyway; you just posited a bunch of assertions, waffling about “empirical evidence.”
If you want to keep your nonsense to your own site, be my guest. If you think there aren’t any refutations here, and it is beneath you to address them, I will ban you to spare of you of the temptation of wasting time on this board with bantering. Got it?
Hah, is this how you deal with dissenting opinions little lover of freedom?
It’s not that the refutation here are beneath me to address them, it’s that I don’t see a reason why I should come to your little hidden private corner to discuss under the threat of the banhammer, when you pharaohs can’t drag your arse outside of your groupthink box.
@Nitroaddict: I hope you now understand why there’s no serious dialogue is possible. That would require a willingness to venture outside one’s bubble (like you do incidentally) and an open mind that is able to see the other perspective.
To all the rest around here, who couldn’t miss the opportunity to exrcise your peer-backed hostility, well, it’s been fun and all, but I don’t see a reason to stay around. If you want to discuss and even point out the errors of my analysis, you know where to find me. And if you think my own site is too biased, by all mean come over to neutral ground.