What if free market made the poor poorer?

Economics Political Theory
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1

I agree that the free market is the best avenue for increasing the wealth of the poor.

However, what would your position on the free market be if, hypothetically, the free market made the poor poorer, or at least kept the poor from becoming more wealthy while the rich continuously became more wealthy? And let’s say that, in practice, forced redistribution of wealth (whether it be interventionism or full-fledged socialism) made the poor continually more wealthy while also allowing the rich to become more wealthy.

For those that believe it is wrong to take someones property, would you still want the free market to be used in practice?

2

Yes.

3

Unequivocally yes.

4

Yes.

And to make a comparison with natural selection, if there was anything such as health transfer, I wouldn’t cause physical harm to survivors to benefit the sick. And even this comparison is incomplete, since I believe many poor people choose and accept their status, just as some of the sick choose to be sick by causing harm to themselves, consciously or not.

5

Yeah. I’m not going to enslave myself to a minority of individuals.

-Jon

6

“Poor” is such an ambiguous term anyway, but I don’t think that’s any accident.

7

The question doesn’t really make sense. The free-market makes everybody better-off because it works in tune with human nature. What’s morally correct and what is practical go hand in hand.

8

I’ll define “poor.”

Poor means log cabins with no electricity and or indoor plumbing. Also, uncertainty in terms of food and bacteria free water. I’m talking pre-industrial style poverty here.

9

That’s such a minority anyway it doesn’t matter. My point is when any socialist talks about the poor they’re always very ambiguous.

10

Ok, but in my hypothetical world, everyone but 1% of people are like this.

11

No, because, then the free market wouldn’t be the best. You’re asking, that hypothetically if there were methods of making people healthier, wealthier, and more educated and skilled other-than the free market, would we choose it over the market. I would say, absolutely I would. Because if the market was a unsuccessful system, then it wouldn’t be a moral system. If redistributionism worked good for everyone than it would be moral to support it. Theft is immoral because it hurts everyone. If theft was beneficial to everyone, then theft would be moral. Individual pursuit of happiness would then become immoral.

12

Then taxing the 1% wouldn’t do a whole lot of good anyway.

13

I’ll define “poor”.

Poor (can) mean relying on credit, living paycheck to paycheck to “get by” (probably having no savings, in any form, in the worst case scenario), & operating within a state-capitalist market that has artificially distorted both perceptions & expectations of the standard of living possible, & the means required in order to achieve it, as well as artificially raising the barrier to entry in many fields & markets.

Additionally, access to goods & technology that would help make a better standard of living possible, are also distorted & artificially kept harder than needed to aqquire, from those who profit from such (i.e. Comcast / Verizon duopoly).

It is no shock that some peers I know have fled to California with next to no plan, smirking that welfare will take care of them until they find a dead-end job, or a job they can make capital from, but not necessarily like it & probably never advance in as a serious field of expertise and/or occupation.

Poor can also mean (but does not necessarily require) one to be an avid consumer, outsourcing the abiltiy to produce/consume your own goods and/or trade them to others in exchange for other goods (this may or may not be monetarily feasible, but it’s not hard to imagine some situations where producing rather than consuming helps one in the long run).

Obviously, the concept of economical ignorance makes some level of consumption required (one cannot become a farmer part-time while being in say, the IT field, while maintaining a social life outside of said fields, without farming & hypothetical I.T. job become a 24/7 ordeal), but many could still cut down on consumption, save & produce more, & maintain a (albiet, subjective) acceptable standard of living.

As for “log cabins with no electricity and or indoor plumbing” not being an acceptable standard of living (this was implied, methinks): what about the Amish? I don’t recall ever hearing them complaining that their AOL dial-up stopped working (I kid, I don’t think they have Internet).

It’d be hard to call a voluntarily adhered to standard of living (even if, in comparison, this standard seems less than others like say, in the city) poverty, especially if the Amish are not dying and/or harmed by this adhered standard of living.

Otherwise, we could technically say we are always in poverty, if one accepts that new technology helps to yield better standards of living (that whole we-are-always-in-the-present thing, with the future possibly always trumpting us in terms of a standard of living I.E. 1900’s USA vs. 2008 USA).

14

That’s like asking, what if treating women with respect and not raping them resulted in the death of most women. Would you become a rapist and a misogynyst if this were so?

When asking questions, it’s generally a good idea that they pertain to some sort of aspect of reality.

15

Did you know that half of the working people earn less than the average income?

16

That’s horrible…I guess this is what happens when we have 8 years of George Bush’s austrian supply-side free-market no regulation small government economic policies. We need to do something about this unfair state of affairs! Everyone should have above average wages now!!!

17

Asking if I would support the non-aggression principle in a world where the NAP had negative results is like asking me if I would support the principle that 2+2=4 in a world where 2+2=5. The answer is, that world cannot exist. The question is unanswerable.

18

If in your hypothetical world the poor became poorer in a free market, we’d all have to agree that human nature would be fundamentally different and most likely require a completely different set of rules/morals/ethics/etc. and hence a completely different economic system. Essentially, you’re comparing apples to oranges.

19

Essentially the question boils down to asking us to imagine a world that isn’t governed by natural laws and then using it to discredit our libertarian philosophy that way.

Through study of natural law and austrian economics we know aprori that the poor are wealthier in the long-term under a genuine free market system.

20

Also I’d say the free market should be grounded first and foremost on ethics not social utility. After all what if hypothetically the poor could be made wealthier by exterminating the Jews and redistibuting their property to the poor? - on the grounds of mere social utility there can be no objection. On the grounds of ethics it would rightly be objected to as mass murder.