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Thread: The hard road of free markets

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    Quote Originally Posted by resister View Post
    Why the hell do people practically beg for ever expanding gov to control more of their daily activities? Is gov so trustworthy but not the citizenry?
    Who do you think is in the government vs the citizenry - different species? The corruption that you find in government comes from its citizens.
    In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.



    "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
    Mahatma Gandhi

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    Quote Originally Posted by Refugee View Post
    If all the cronyism, government involvement and capitalism disappeared tomorrow and we started again from scratch, what we’d be left with is free markets. That’s the default of economic success. The reason people tend not to like it is because they’re all looking for this equality based economic system which doesn’t exist. I make something, I sell you it, or we barter. I try to make the most profit from my labour, you try to buy cheap, or barter up yours. We bargain, we haggle, we make a deal. Someone does it better than me they become richer, someone does it worse they become poorer, someone who doesn’t do anything waits for someone else to feed and clothe them and dreams up a failed economic system that makes them equal to the producers. When that doesn’t happen, they blame us and tell us the system is wrong.
    In about five minutes it would turn into capitalism, just as it did in the past because as long as we value money above everything else, it will always be thus.
    In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.



    "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
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    resister's Avatar Senior Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Who View Post
    Who do you think is in the government vs the citizenry - different species? The corruption that you find in government comes from its citizens.
    So...lets ask for more of the same...
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

    Book of Democrat Things, Chapter 1:1






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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Who View Post
    In about five minutes it would turn into capitalism, just as it did in the past because as long as we value money above everything else, it will always be thus.
    Money is a veil though. You just don't get it. I don't value the 'money' I value the THREE THOUSAND $#@!ING HOURS I BILLED THIS YEAR. I don't value the money 'above all else' I value that because it represents a MASSIVE $#@!ING EFFORT.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Newpublius View Post
    Money is a veil though. You just don't get it. I don't value the 'money' I value the THREE THOUSAND $#@!ING HOURS I BILLED THIS YEAR. I don't value the money 'above all else' I value that because it represents a MASSIVE $#@!ING EFFORT.
    There are people who put in even more than 3,000 hours a year who don't get a 10th of what you get for those 12-hour days. However, consider why you have to put in 12-hour days. Go back a few hundred years. Most people routinely put in 12-hour days 7-days a week back then. Was it always because they needed to work that hard to live or was it often because their labor was often primarily accruing to someone else so that they had to work at least half as much again just to eat? If you look at the value that your labor accrues to someone else and the number of people who are probably living very well off the value of your labor without working at all, you will see that the current system is set up to create a pyramidal system where the many support the few in the lap of luxury. Now today for some people working 12-hour days is the difference between just having the necessities of life and for others it is about about being a part of a certain class, having a certain house and paying for very expensive university educations for their children.

    Realistically, if 90% of all after-tax profits were not going to investors who do nothing to earn income, you wouldn't have to work as hard, but the entire system from banking to the stock market is set up this way. Product that millions of hours of labor takes to create is destroyed routinely, rather than selling for less, produce that farmers sweat blood to deliver is burned, rather than lower prices. Who is really benefitting from all of this waste? You? Your family? TBH as the 'market' is increasingly involved in the bottom line of businesses and the value of currency, people have gone from the American dream to the American nightmare. Simultaneously, the population has been taught to believe that they deserve a standard of luxury that their parents didn't enjoy and they are not willing to wait to upgrade. They have to have it before they hit their 40's, so there has never been a greater level of personal debt, not to mention national debt. What is the common denominator?
    In quoting my post, you affirm and agree that you have not been goaded, provoked, emotionally manipulated or otherwise coerced into responding.



    "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
    Mahatma Gandhi

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Who View Post
    In about five minutes it would turn into capitalism, just as it did in the past because as long as we value money above everything else, it will always be thus.

    Yes, it would, that’s why it always does. We value money because of the lifestyle it provides and the ability of ownership it creates. Eventually it gets out of hand and corporations become bigger than the governement and its people. That’s the time to introduce legislation, not destroy it. The problem now is that so many people in the hierarchy are involved in corruption, it’s beginning to be impossible to stop.

    So, what’s the solution? As long as people keep voting for the political corruption it will never stop. Socialism has shown that particular system to be a nonsense. We carry on, ignoring the rest, putting aside the jealousy, stop trying to create impossible economic utopias and as long as we can put food on the table, afford medical care and own what we have, our standard of living is going to far surpass that of any previous generation.


    Is it jealousy that others have more, or are we trying to create an economic utopia of equality. No one was ever equal and someone will always have more or less than we personally have. Who’s going to provide this equality? The 1% politically elite millionaires? A workers revolutionary party (who will become the new 1% polically elite millionairres)? Of course it’s not fair, nor is life, is that an amzing discovery? Apart from, ‘we should spread the wealth around’ (not mine you’re not!), what suggestions are there to create this equality and fairness?
    Last edited by Refugee; 12-20-2017 at 03:51 AM.








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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    The fundamental reason so many markets are not free, and so dysfunctional, is that the voters of our democracy don't really want freedom. Freedom will come when we want it, when we insist on it, when the average voter sees a free market solution rather than endless controls as the answer to real world problems. The sad paradox of free markets is that free markets do not need people to understand them to work. But democracy does require voters to understand how things work.

    --John Cochrane, The hard road of free markets
    Free markets was a concept before outsourcing a countries prosperity out of greed. Why should any voter vote for anything that sends their jobs to China, Mexico, India and Phillipines and thailand and Vietnam and Bhangladesh.
    LETS GO BRANDON
    F Joe Biden

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    The answer is in ‘free’ markets. If you use capitalism to try to produce equality through welfare, something for which it was never designed, after all the social costs of hiring, you’ll find that your products are unafordable to the majority. Add on high taxation, minimum wages, corporate taxes and you’ve just priced yourself out of any market.


    The people choose to buy foreign, because they can afford it and the businesses choose foreign because they couldn’t otherwise produce a competative price.










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    I remember when monopolies of corporations were prohibited prior to the 80's, however, that changed since politicians were able to gain more political donations from corporations that did monopolized the market. A free market did not stand a chance in this reality.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dr. Who View Post
    Free markets can't work within large populations because large populations involve social anonymity thus needing far greater government to create order and structure, which results in the interplay between large business interests and elected representatives. The free market disappeared because of large populations and the evolution of the state. In the same circumstances, the free market will always become unfree because we are dealing with large masses of human beings, greed and technological advancement that favors capitalism over a free market.

    So you are correct, it is rigged and it is anachronistic. It fails to consider human nature outside of small familiar communities who keep each other in check. Ironically the issue was addressed in the bible: "For the love of money is the root of all evil" 1 Timothy 6:10, KJV. When people don't know each other it is very simple to think singularly about financial success to the exclusion of everything else. It creates artificial scarcity and the ability to think of one's fellow man abstractedly.

    Short of a major cataclysm, we are not going to return to small populations and the free market is and will only be alive and well in the underground economy. We can either live with the downside of capitalism and work on fixing the inherent corruption or find a new economic model that values something other than money.

    Free markets can't work within large populations because large populations involve social anonymity thus needing far greater government to create order and structure, which results in the interplay between large business interests and elected representatives.
    Don't just make claims. Argue your point. How do your explain the global market where no government controls it? Untill you establish your basic premise the rest of your argument is nonsense. The free market disappeared? Honestly, who, where do you come up with these things?
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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