We're in total agreement that the governments of the west have been bought. You say by big corporations... i agree mostly. but its more than that - they're puppets of the banking elite. It's not co-incidence that these governments are all socialist in nature. in fact, they're not just socialist, they're fascist due to their unholy marriage with big corporations and the banking elite. but socialism and fascism are very compatible bedmates - and indeed are fused together in western governments/police states. the answer to this would be to strip government of most of its powers and hand power and freedom back to individuals. the ONLY role of government should be to ensure that the court system works and that contracts between individuals are upheld and that defence of the country is in place. In short - Ron Paul type libertarian governments are what's needed. Ironical as it may sound, but all socialists/Marxists/Communists/Collectivists - such as yourself - are simply useful idiots for the elite ... they absolutely NEED such an authoritarian/coercive style government (which they control of course) to CONTROL everybody in society - like ants ... Libertarians such as Ron Paul who aim to severely limit the powers of governments (through a Bills of Rights and upholding the Constitution) by unwinding and dropping all statues and laws which infringe the rights of individuals is the GREATEST THREAT TO THE ELITE AND CORPORATIONS ... which is why the media - which is owned by the elite - try to discredit all libertarians such as Ron Paul. As silly and ironical as it may seem to you - you and your socialist ilk are the USEFUL IDIOTS of the elite (1%) :lol:
let me ask you this question. You wrote this: "The ONLY role of government should be to ensure that the court system works and that contracts between individuals are upheld and that defence of the country is in place." What if two corporations entered into a contract to supply a certain good or service at a fixed price for a certain period of time? That distorts the free flow of price discovery in the market. What if...two corporations decided to contract together to merge. And then that corporation contracted to merge with another until they gained a monopoly position in the market and could control price, take measures to make barriers to entry into a market and buy off the government. If the government's role is to enforce contracts, then they must defend these cobntracts because they were entered into legally and by the free will of the parties. If the government has to stop certain kinds of contracts, then THE GOVERNMENT IS INTERFERING WITH TEH FREE MARKET. So you see, the Libertarian model you support which you barely even understand, is not going to do what all the free market pundits think it would.
I know who wrote that, but YKY ain't no objectivist Incidentally Earthjade, your understanding of a free market model is flawed It's impossible for a monopoly to exist under a free market model
WOW where to start in this. Firstly Earth Jade, you can explain it in very simple terms but it doesn't make your impression any more right. Correct and as a result the consumer gets the best products at the lowest market price. If only this is what we have in reality. The "market" goes through booms and busts, the truly free market grows constantly at a sustainable pace occasionally correcting for mis allocations of capital. We don't have a free market at the moment, that is the big problem. There is too much manipulation via government. The reason the business cycle even exists these days is how the Austrian Economists describe it. Booms and busts are completely engineered through the expansion of credit and the fractional Reserve Banking system. Really? you don't say. The reason the 'weaker' firms go under is because of bad credit policies. Too much debt to income or too much reliance on debt when the correction comes and they fold.....as they should. Thats life. If a company runs its business right they can be poised to acquire assets at the right price. Ifthe liquidators want to sell off assets then so whats the point? The creditors need to get some sort of return on the misallocated capital they gave the bad company and someone needs to buy it. Rubbish, it's not production capacity at all that needs to be cleared it is un productive costs. Sure if you have a company that hires people to sew clothing in a factory and you only can sell half the productive output then workers need to go but, production capacity is not the central issue it's the 'fat' that needs to be cut anywhere that is possible. Because you missed point 5, point 6 follows the same flaw. Maybe you are just looking at it from the wrong view. Well run companies are ones that run fiscally prudent balance sheets and don't over extend themselves. As Big A.D. worries too much about, the small business owner who's business credit is tied to his house value and therefore its ability to continue in a down turn is a flawed business model. If they can't survive then they don't deserve to survive. The Capital becomes centralised briefly as credit contracts and expands exponentially when the credit boom starts again. The only reason for a company to clear out production capacity is because of bad fiscal management. WTF drugs are you on? The price discovery happened the second the contract was signed. The buyer and seller "discovered" an acceptable price before the contract was signed. In a FREE market they can never control the price. As soon as the price is too expensive the buyer desert them until a competitor establishes themselves to compete. You just answered every thing for me in your last sentence. You have just described what has been going on for the past few decades in the western world. Lobbyists and big corporations have been corrupting capitalism for a long time through buying off politicians. Hence why we don't have a free market to begin with.
The true nature of Capitalism? WTF! Where do you learn this stuff? I really want to know. It ends up this way when governments intervene in the first place and then when things go bad. Every time they do so it makes the problem worse and worse. All of these bad punts in business and wall street have been allowed to happen because of government intervention. The Goldman Sachs lobbying government to relax rules as to the listing on the stock exchange and all the normal requirements that other companies have lived by for years created the Stock bubble and crash. Same thing with fanny and freddie = boom and crash. The corpratists manipulated government for so long that the final pain came in 2007, and as usual the corrupt politicians didn't make them all take their medicine. Slowly over time we have allowed government to have so much control that now the big corporations and in particular the banks have them by the balls. THIS IS NOT CAPITALISM. But as to my major liking, we are very close to the end of that road that the can has been kicked. The governments ability to intervene is getting weaker and weaker.
So government interference creates the problem by regulating the market and then government creates another problem by not regulating the market? Riiiiight.
] Government interference and regulation IS the problem. Because all Government interference ever does is set up barriers to entry for smaller, more agile firms to compete. You see these big monopolistic behemoths are not natural. They would not be able to exist under true Capitalism. They only reason the are able to exist is because Government sets up all these onerous regulations and complex tax codes, and so these huge companies can use their economies of scale to employ hordes of lawyers and lobbyists and tax accountants and compliance officers etc. which the smaller, more agile and competitve firms just can't carry the burden of because they are small and localised and focussed on giving the consumer the best deal instead of greasing palms in the capital. So far from being antagonistic to big business, government is actually symbiotic with big business. In fact, big business can ONLY survive to the extent that the government becomes large, intrusive, interventionist and regulatory. So the only way for Capitalism to exist, true free market Capitalism that is, with all its attendent virtues and benifits, is for the Government to be LIMITED.
Of course they would. In a capitalist market, giant monopolies are called "successful". That's the whole aim of the game - to grow and grow and become big and rich and powerful. No offense meant, but why the f*** else would these companies exist if not to get bigger and bigger and make more and more money?
Of course that is what they are striving for, but a true free market is perfectly competetive. As Paul Zane Pilzner would say, there are no corners in a true free market. Companies have to compete. They have rivals who are striving just as hard or even harder to "grow and become big and rich and powerful". And in a free market, the only way to do this is by becoming more efficient and more productive, by offering consumers more value, cheaper prices, better service, etc. And to the extent that they can serve the interest of the public the best, they succeed. But not forever, no, not in a free market. There's always a sneaky competitor lurking in the background, in the second tier, who will come up with a new innovation, a new breakthrough, who is smaller and more agile, who can out-compete the big behemoth in a key localised geographical area or important niche in the market. See? Its a dynamic process, and this benign, beneficial process is only disrupted when the big know-it-all government barges in and lays down the law. With the best intentions of course, but totally oblivious to the law of unintended consequences.
Or as John Nash would say, why not just settle down into a cozy arrangement where everyone of a certain size gets a decent chunk of cash and nobody has to really make much of an effort? Yeah, right up until Google buys them out, the founders walk away with a few million bucks for their half developed idea that's still in Beta and the whole process gets locked up forever by the patent lawyers and forgotten about.
That wouldnt happen in a free market. If you believed that then you don't understand the nature of the free market. Monopolies exist only through government sponsorship. In a freely competitive market they are self regulating. The moment you try and force a monopoly (and thus price controls) someone will undermine your establishment and cut into your profit
for all the talks of free market, have you ever thought about cartels? In a true free market, the cartels can decide things and smaller competitors can never enter the market. A form of monopoly will always emerge, be it a single player or multiplayer monopoly. Free market is not free of humans. It is just a market free of regulation, something akin to wild west.
Sure a cartel might arise for a while, but, just as nature abhors a vaccum, the free market abhors slack capacity. There will always be an ambitious young up and comer, an unconventional rule-breaker who thinks outside the box, to come along and bust apart that type of cosy collusion you talk about. You see the free market is nothing more than the inherently natural organisation of economics, just like all other systems of natural organisation. So, Dinosaurs existed on earth for a while, but now they are extinct. Just like the law of nature (and free markets) abhorring a vaccum, nature (and free markets) operate through the ruthless "survival of the fittest" mechanism. Google have created so much value, they have really done a good job, but they won't last forever. IBM was the main name in computers for a long time, but they totally missed the shift from mainframes to PC's, from business computers to home computers. And then Microsoft were the biggest name around in computers, but they totally missed the progression from disk based software to cloud based internet. Now google is the biggest name around, but some shift will take place, some technological breakthrough will occurr. Your worries about what *might* happen are unfounded when we look at the history of the real world.
How would a young dude break the cartel? A cartel can serve its interest by either raising a barrier of entry so high it is impossible to get in, or by trade blockade through price manipulation etc. The only times a cartel can be challenged if a player of greater power enters the ring or by pure sheer fluke. But when cartels become a global network, the only greater power is extra terrestrial. In survival of the fittest terms, domination and market control will come as a very high priority. A form of order that will less likely destroy past organisations will emerge and is desirable for anyone in business.
Balderdash!! Cartells can ONLY win if they are in a sheltered environment created by governement interference and regulation. While this kind of dimwitted view is to be expected from our collectivist friends i must say i'm really surprised to hear this kind of drivel from you!
once again - bullshit! your logic is serverely flawed ... go play with the other collectivists... :lol:
