Amaros
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ORIGINAL: Amaros
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ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
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ORIGINAL: Amaros
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1.Free markets don't exist and never have. Free markets are about the power to exploit the weak.
Gott a pick on meatcleaver for a minute - free markets are just what people do when they aren't subject to feudalism, it all starts with division of labor. Capitalism is about artificially sustaining the natural (initial) state of affairs.Not all that different from ideal, theoretical Marxism, actually (to each according to his abilities, etc.). Throw in profit sharing (stock), and you practially have Marxism in perfect praxis (for you Marx fans out there, it ther actually are any). That markets are prone to distortion is a given, Adam Smith was the first to notice it and comment for the record.
I'm not talking about theoretical free markets, I'm talking about actual free markets and they don't exist. Not even the US has a free market, it is skewed by regulation and law to favour the corporations, hardly the pillars of free markets. It has a host of protectionist regulation that obviously favours its internal market and helps keep competition at bay to some degree and because it is failing to do so at the moment, there is political pressure for more protectionism. I'm not picking on the US because they are worse than any other country when it comes to regulation or protectionism but because of US rhetoric advocates free markets and as such is seen (rightly or wrongly) by many as the most capitalistic country in te world.
Free markets is cheap talk and all countries have regulation and laws controling both their internal and external markets and keeping the powerful, well... powerful.
“The principles are clear and explicit. The free market is fine for the third world and its growing counterpart at home. Mothers with dependent children can be sternly lectured on the need for self-reliance, but not dependent executives and investors, please. For them, the welfare state must flourish.”
Noam Chomsky
It is true that some markets are freer than others - I was mainly referring to primitive barter markets I believe.
You might be shocked to discover that republican administrationas are historically much more protectionist than democratic administrations - Reagan slapped steep tarriffs on Indonesian textile products for example - Hell I was buying 100% silk dress shirts for less than the price of a Fruit of the Loom undershirts - probobly made in Indonesia or China now.
The problem there being, that since the civil war, the only thing produced in any quantity besides oil and paper, South of the Mason-Dixon line - is finished textiles, carpeting, etc.
Agricultural commodities are one area that defies any attempt to create a free market: I remember when I first started noticing back in the late Seventies, farmers were burning their surpluses to drive the price up, in the face of drought and starvation in Africa and the Soviet Union. The current administration mocked the concept of fair trade, and claimed to be establishing free trade, then promptly passed the largest farm subsidy bill in US history.
This wiped out Twenty years of delicate adjustments between the US and the EU: under fair trade, tariffs were applied to compensate for subsidies and tariffs on the EU side, which at that time were mostly on the EU side, and which we were, on the very eve of the Bush election, slowly persuading the Europeans to abandon.
The problems there are that food isn't just a product, but often closely tied to national identity and security issues: Japan has steadily refused to stop subsidizing rice production, they don't care, they simly refuse to become dependent on anybody else for a staple like rice, which has symbolic meaning far beyond it's nutritional value.
In short, it's back to being a mess, the Bushies were acting as unilaterally in trade as they were in everything else, and it's now a case of basically starting over from scratch.
Those subsidies, passed by the Bush congress, are currently the target of farmers from around the world who are being crushed by the results: http://www.finalcall.com/international/farmers10-08-2002.htm
The very idea of a totally free market outside the barter system is a Randian/Libertarian myth, it's true: regulation ideally, should try to even things out as much as possible, but it's hard to discuss it rationally when you don't understand exactly how it works, and how complicated it can get - fair trade policies were working to create as close to free market conditions as possible in world of meddling governments.
< Message edited by Amaros -- 1/13/2007 9:35:15 AM >
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RE: Failure of the world-wide capitalist system ... kinda. - 
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