Kreutz wrote:gunderwood wrote:@Kruetz
Since deregulation and privatization are big things for you, here is an example.
In the simplest statement, Democrats believe the government must regulate and control certain markets <insert reason here>. Republicans believe that those markets should be "deregulated." I'm being purposefully vague about what that means to make a point. Far too often the middle ground is adopted, which results in utter failure. Deregulation usually means that Ds and Rs compromise and come up with a complex system which is basically the following:
1. Rs get a "market" based solution.
2. Ds get continued government control.
The compromise isn't deregulation at all. It is a market based regulation where the government keeps its fingers in the pie, but attempts to use "market" forces to better manage the system. That is often considered the middle ground compromise, but It is doomed to failure.
From a libertarian point of view, there is no difference between the bureaucrat regulated system and one which attempts to regulated using market based solutions. The compromise isn't the middle ground at all because both parties have already agreed that that market can only function with government intervention. A study of praxeology and catallactics would show that the market based regulatory solution is always doomed to failure. The market only works in the absence of force where human action can be exercised until that action becomes unethical through the application of force. The Republican and Democrat alternatives really are the same thing, two sides of the same coin if you like. They both want government involvement and regulation, but simply argue over the best way to accomplish that task. Both proposals will always results in a suboptimal solution, AKA failure.
A simple change of reference point makes diametrically opposed positions actually the same. The proper choice of reference frame depends on the debate. E.g. Is deregulation about how government should be involved in regulating a market or is it defined by the distinct lack of special regulation?
It's not so much a compromise as kind of letting the pieces fall where they may.
A truly "free market" has
never existed in human history. I consider this a good thing, you would not.
Not quite. A free market is an economic distinction about how resources are allocated and used. It makes no assumptions about how ethical violations are enforced, nor does it mean anarchy as you're implying. The cornerstone of the free market is ethics. The whole philosophical foundation for its being a valid way to organize an economy and society is based on ethics. Real capitalism is founded on the study of human action and the laws of social cooperation. Those ethical distinctions tell us how we are to organize society rather than determining how we wish it to be organized and rationalizing it after the fact. There is no such thing as a un-ethical free market; that is just replacing one type of force with another.
One way to distinguish ethical regulation and centralized regulation is to ask if the regulation is special to the market or any sub-market. For example, theft and fraud are theft and fraud regardless if it happens in the stock market or the car dealership or completely outside of economics as in your house was broken into. The regulation of theft and fraud is universal and thus exists even in free market. The free market makes no distinction on how theft and fraud are regulated in a society, it simply requires that there is no special regulation. The free market does require society provide a form of ethical regulation, but it demands it be applied universally throughout the entire society and it is nothing special for economics. For example, special regulation of a car dealership which requires them to go above and beyond the basic ethical regulation which everyone is under (inside and outside the economy) is a form of market control, thus, no free market would exist there.
I think your understanding of the free market is only what the media feeds you. Have you ever read any of the free marketers?
Kreutz wrote:Commerce requires, almost begs for regulation, be it from government or religion (usury laws for example) because people will inherently game a system for an advantage.
Commerce is nothing special in this aspect. Unethical people attempt to game every system, including commerce. This is exactly why societies create some form of "government" to regulate that behavior. The regulation of unethical behavior or more generally "bad" behavior is fine. What isn't fine is when the government uses those laws to regulate how money is spent, how resources are allocated, etc. out side of basic ethical standards which are applied throughout society.
The free market is just the most efficient and ethical way for society to organize commerce. It does not exist outside of society and it should have additional regulation which isn't on the whole of society. Price controls, wage controls, interest rate controls, money supply controls, special regulation about who gets a home loan, etc., etc. is not ethical regulation, it is market control. It is centralized economic planning, which is the exact opposite of the free market; the free market is a distributed system which gives no one the power to perform unethical acts in it including the government. The ethical regulations of society still apply in a free market.
Kreutz wrote:Of course this happens anyway, but if we abandon the effort, what is to stop Merchant A selling toys from totally undercutting Merchant B selling toys because A adulterates his product with lead while B remains honest and uses only steel?
If A admits it uses lead, then there is no problem. People can decide for themselves if the money saved is worth the risk associated with lead. Let's make this applicable to this forum. Most of our ammo contains lead, but there are lead free alternatives. The market by and large has decided that the money saved is worth the small amount of lead we ingest from eating game and such which has been shot with a lead core bullet. As long as the manufacturers admit that this is the product they are selling, we should be free to choose which bullet we wish to pay for. If a manufacturer adds lead to a product and claims it is lead-free than they have committed fraud and society regulates that, but it isn't anything special to commerce. E.g. libel and slander are types of fraud which society has decided to regulate which are not economic in nature. Although any particular case may be related to an economic transaction, nothing in the law requires it to be. Society is free to regulation those ethical issues and it has no impact on the free market organization of commerce.
Kreutz wrote:Again, there is two extremes; regulate nothing to not hinder that damned invisible hand, or kill an economy with burdensome government to make sure everyone is safe and sound.
Again, this is a false dichotomy. Economic organization is not a two solution option as there are many competing alternatives. Economic organization only boils down two core alternatives in three cases as far as I know:
1. Ethical vs. unethical organizational schemes
2. Mono-logical vs. poly-logical schemes.
3. Distributed vs centralized schemes.
The third may be stretching it a bit for a formal definition, but any centralized scheme inherently alters any of the remaining distributed decisions of human action. This is exactly what we have today and is what causes the bubbles etc. I.e. the law of unintended consequences illustrates this concept, but approaches it from a different angle.
Kreutz wrote:The middle ground is again the best choice, enforce reasonable regulations, but allow markets to operate with minimal interference so as not to choke them to death under red tape. Judging by the success of this system, and its widespread acceptance by seemingly most human populations, it is if not the best choice, certainly the most practiced one.
There is no point in even arguing this anymore. I have shown you that your entire rational is illogical. It is a fallacy no matter how you choose to rationalize it. If you are still ignorant of rational and logical thought on this point that is your problem not mine. I've shown you how this position is illogical many times in this thread already, but you cling to your ignorance.
Kreutz wrote:And thanks for the read, felt like I was in college again, except I am learning thigs lol.
You're welcome, but you should never stop learning.
Edit: There have been actual free markets which worked even without government regulation of social-unethical behavior. One such example was the privatization of money production in Britain. I can get you exact sources, but basically the crown only minted coins which were useful for large business to use, while the people were reduced to practically bartering. A whole city in Britain became the private money hub for the common person. The crown didn't regulate it at all because it was too busy worrying about its merchantille system...that is until it became obvious just how much better private money was to government currency. There were many competing private currency's and some were created by schemer's, but the natural market mechanisms kept those in check and the criminals were prosecuted under standard theft and fraud laws because the crown couldn't care less at that point.
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