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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
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There's no such thing as a free market. So explain that, 'cause we're all being told that not only are we in a free market, they should be freer
Anyone,
Before I listen to that Real News Report linked above I am going to take a crack at the statement quoted above.
Where there is no crime, is there a free market?
You have something. Someone else has something. You trade with that person. Neither one of you lies about what you are trading. Neither one of you uses false information to encourage the trade so as to gain at the expense of the other, and neither one of you threatens the other one and thereby coerces the other to trade.
Neither one steals by way of fraud.
Neither one steals by way of threat of violence.
Neither one steals by way of violence.
Both agree, freely, without false belief, without threat of punishment, that no one is injured, on purpose, for profit, not even someone not party to the trade, no one is known to be injured on purpose at all.
One doesn't gain, at the expense of the other, against the will, or against the knowledge of either one or anyone.
Has that ever happened in human history?
Is there a free market?
If the Free Market in not the description above, then what is it? Who is claiming that the Free Market is this, or that, and why are they saying that the Free Market is this or that, or is someone claiming that the Free Market is ambiguous, not well defined, misunderstood, and means one thing today, and according to that person, or according to that group, the Free Market means something opposite tomorrow.
Constructive interpretation.
There is a free market, when there is one. When there is crime, there is crime. Confusing the two opposites may benefit someone, and you may be able to guess who?
I will listen.
And it wasn't free market that gave rise to a ban on child labor. It took government and a law and people saying in the interests of the society you can't have child labor.
A child will have to labor when necessities are scarce, and that is a fact, and that can become a brutal fact.
Who want's, or who needs, things to be scarce?
What is the motive behind making things scarce?
What is done, by people, so as to make things scarce?
If you want to know, it may help to learn a few things from history, including some things taught by one capitalist whose name is Karl Menger.
Capitalist dogma includes the notion that economic value only exists when something is scarce. That type of thinking drives human effort toward the work of making things scarce, so as to increase profit, and I can explain that in detail.
I want to move onto something else in the Real News Report for now:
Yeah. No. I mean, [inaudible] total double standard. You know. And basically the very reason why I wrote that thing, Thing 1, is to show that, you know, free-marketeers have been telling us that while we have this scientifically defined entity called the market, the free market, and any attempt to meddle with this its workings is unscientific, politically motivated, and so on, but actually what I'm saying is that no, actually, the so-called free-market position is as political as any other position.
A double standard is a politically correct euphemism for fraud. If no one is injured by a lie, or the injury is superfluous, instead of severe, then a lie does not qualify, by a physical measure, as a crime.
Example 1:
Your dress does not make you look fat.
Example 2:
We are conducting this aggressive war for profit because those guys demolished three buildings in New York.
In the first place, I tell my wife, what I think, even if she wants me to tell her lies. In the second place there are millions of people being tortured and mass murdered because the people who have the power to stop such crimes are led to believe the lies that cover up those crimes. One is one thing. The other is another thing. To confuse the two is a double standard type thing.
Is it true?
No
Yes
No double standard.
Is the truth known?
Yes
No
No double standard.
Is there a Free Market?
Who is the authority being asked? Do they record a history of telling the truth? Do they record a history, on paper, in video, of telling lies?
Why would anyone trust them?
Is there a scarcity of the truth? Who benefits from all the work done to make truth, facts, trust in facts, scarce?
Is there power in truth? Is the power exclusive? Someone believing a lie is powerless.
Which lie is the worst one? How about: "I am here to help you, give me your power, and I will use it to help you."
I am telling the truth, you can believe me, no need for a second opinion.
We can fix this, just send me more power.
If the power collected, by any means, voluntary (non criminal), involuntary (criminal), the means can be ignored for a moment, the collected power can then be used to accomplish something.
If the thing accomplished is an increase in power, then there is more power.
If the thing accomplished is a decrease in power, then there is less power.
Which is better?
Some of the capitalist dogma, if not all of it, inspires a cap on power, throttle down the production of power, so as to avoid the capitalist terror storm of too much power.
In capitalist dogma, a condition of too much power, makes power worthless.
This can be seen clearly in Joe's Law.
Power produced into oversupply (reaching for too much power) reduces the price of power (those that have it can jack up the price if it is scarce, and those that want it can get it at a lower price when it is abundant) while purchasing power increases (you get more for less when money is more powerful today than it was yesterday, you buy more with one unit of money today, also called deflation) because power reduces the cost of production.
Capitalism is turned up-side-down when dealing with the production of power, and the production of power producing products, and when dealing with the production of power saving power.
Example:
A more efficient way to get from A to B such as a road
Society A has no roads while society B, an exact copy of society A, uses power to make roads.
Society A spends a lot of power walking over rough terrain, so society A does not gain power as quickly as society B, measurably, and accurately measurably, even if the politicians who call themselves socialists claim otherwise, and even if the politicians who call themselves capitalists claim otherwise.
If power flows from the many to one collection point, by way of voluntary association, or by way of involuntary association, and then that power is used to improve travel, compared to an expense such as a failed aggressive war for profit, then that power used for improved transportation can be known as investment, and the failed aggressive war for profit can be known as malinvestment.
One increases power - investment.
One decrease power - malinvestment.
The investment of roads enabled by the use of an aggressive war for profit (an involuntary association) can be a net malinvestment, because the victims subtract from the net total power measure. Those who suffer, involuntarily, for the benefit of others are called victims, even if the politicians calling themselves socialist say otherwise, and even if the politicians calling themselves capitalist say otherwise, ask the victims.
Victims may lie too, but then they are not innocent victims, if the lie injures innocent victims on purpose, a willful lie that is meant to injure an innocent victim, then how is that not crime, even if the victims are clueless?
A. Society A voluntarily improves transportation - without any victims suffering a reduction in their power, no exploited class, no profiting class who profit at the expense of the victims - known or unknown.
B. Society B invades Society A and succeeds in enslaving society A, forcing them to pay taxes, to improve the roads going into society C.
C. Society C is a remote society that will cost a whole lot of power to invade, and will cost a whole lot of power to exploit, before profits are realized, so taxes are raised to lower that cost, by building a road to it, so as to make it cheaper to invade it, to annex it, and then tax the victims in it, and make the use of the tool called war, by any other name it still stinks, and make war more useful to the perpetrators of war, more efficient, more better for them, and more detrimental to the target market of the day - society C.
Society C may also have oil.
Oil is powerful. Oil is even more powerful if it is produced so as to maintain a scarcity of it, to keep power scarce, and therefore profitable. Even more powerful if it is used to expand and then contract the society being exploited, so as to create, and maintain, a business cycle, where those who cause it, benefit from it, by knowing when to sell (at the top), and when to buy (at the bottom).
Too much power, for too long, is bad for profits when profits are gained at the expense of the power less.
If power was abundant, almost all the time, relatively speaking, what do you think would happen?
Why is that potential happening a secret?
Why do these authorities fail to uncover that secret?
Is that secret exposed in this Real News Report about capitalism?
I am on the edge of my seat.
Yeah, I guess. And then once you become an imperial power yourself, you start having imperial ideas about what's good and what's bad. Yeah.
At the root, not at the branches, or similarly at the cause, not at the symptoms, an involuntary tax transfers power from those who produce power to those who then become imperial powers.
How can that be a surprise to any thinking person commanding a moral conscience?
What explains the opposite?
Don't ask the perpetrators, they lie, and that is why they are hired.