There are frequently "free trade" bilateral investment treaties signed behind closed doors. I protested the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1997 when I was in college, but it was the French in 1998 that eventually blocked its adoption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateral_Agreement_on_Investment

These are the worst examples of the oligarchy protecting its own interests and extending the status quo, keeping their corporate taxes low and their profits high through tax loopholes and the threat of legal action wherever safety or environmental concerns threaten the bottom line. This is why countries are going broke (including the USA,) not because of "foolish" government spending.

@enoch, if I sound evangelical, it's because I have an allergic reaction to misinformation and a deep aversion to disinformation...

Here are my comments, interspersed:

> and how come all your examples are the european countries that got fucked
> in the ass by corrupt currency and derivative speculators?"

By corrupt currency, do you mean the Euro? These are a big percentage of the so-called "1st world countries."

> are you working for goldman sachs?
> whats the deal man?

Are these borderline ad hominem, or did I miss something...

> denmark? finland?

Is that it, do you want to limit the evidence to the scandinavian countries? Fine, list for me the countries you want me to address and compare to the US or more free market economies and we will proceed from there.

> but its apparent you dont know shit about socialism.
> socialism-communism=not the same.

Personal attacks aside, communism is a type of socialism in the Marxist sense. But to clarify, please define 'socialism' as you think it should be defined, if something other than public control over the means of production.

> and no free market carny barker never seems to want to talk about.

Are you getting upset about something, or are you not calling me a "free market carny barker"?

> 1.how do you fix the currency issue with its pyramid scheme?

What is the currency issue? The central bank's monopoly in currency? You get rid of legal tender laws and let people decide what currency they want to use and accept.

> 2.how do create a level playing field for the wage slave? or debt slave?

You have to be more specific as to what "level playing field means in practice" so that I can answer this.

> 3.or can you outright buy people?

Do you mean slaves? No, that goes against free-market non-aggression and self-ownership principles.

> 4.since nothing is communal and there is no regulation.is there anything that
> cannot be commodified?

Again, please be more specific about what you mean by "commodified." Do you mean are you free to buy and sell anything as long as you don't violate self and property rights? Not clear what you mean here but I'm sure with some clarification I can address it.

> look man.i get it.lots of good things can happen with a free market. but so can
> a lot of bad. eyes open my man.

Sure, but please tell me, what specifically bad can happen in a free market that cannot happen as bad or worse in a non-free market?

> reminds me of the scientist who came up with game theory.
> from the rand institute i think. the whole cold war was set up on this dudes
> principles of self-interest. did a bunch of testing on dudes and the data
> seemed conclusive...until he did the same experiment with secretaries. turns
> but they were unwilling to dick each other over and were more prone to co-
> operate with each other.

How is this relevant? People like to cooperate. That's the basis for the voluntary free market and why it works.

> well how about them apples.co-operation as a way on interacting. ya dont
> say? very interesting.

I agree. Voluntary interaction equals cooperation. That is the free market. Coercion is the non-free market. Is there disagreement here, because I don't see it.

> i know we both agree that what we have now is a clusterfuck.
> and i agree that the free market should have a place,that its even vital. but
> unrestricted free markets? naw..no thanks.

I still don't know the specifics of how exactly you want to "restrict it" and how specifically you want to restrict it. You must forgive me if I don't think you are as competent to restrict me and my life and my business and I myself am. The same with your life and business, I am not qualified to restrict it.
Who is then? Specifically, "who" do you want to restrict you, and your freedom to engage in free trade?

ha ha. who's illegal? thats right.. when their wearen't borders theire was free trade. many people went south or north to trade. of course till ships started to bring unwanted people to start a new lives. but all I say is AWESOME!!!

The other aspect of forced Union membership that bothers me is the interference it places on the individual's rights for free trade and commerce. If I want to trade 3 pigs for a wagon that my neighbor has, and we both agree it's a square deal, then we should be allowed to transact. If the neighboring farmers nix our deal, because they think their pigs are worth 2 to a wagon, then they should be the ones to go find the market that suits their estimate of value.

Copyright law seems to be a total dog's breakfast. From an economic perspective, it just seems like a massive unnecessary barrier to free trade in ideas.

@renatojj

Value is not subjective given common assumptions. This is just tired old relativism being carted out to justify a distinctly non-relative belief. Rational individuals in the same circumstances will value the same things. Trade works because of differing circumstances, not relative value assessments. A baker has easier access to bread than his customers, so when he sells it at a fair price he becomes richer; he doesn't just inherently value bread less highly than everyone else.

A lot of worthless things predate civilisation. What I find baffling about this discussion is you're not willing to believe that free trade between individuals can have negative consequences for other people. In those cases, you must allow it is correct to intervene.

And yes, believing in, supporting and being capable of mass murder are identical with actually participating in it. Our actual physical actions are only trivial by-products of our thoughts; it is always the mentality that is accountable. Thinking differently is fine - thinking criminally is not.

@dystopianfuturetoday the distinction is as clear as day:

- crony capitalism is when government has a lot of power over the economy and constantly meddles with how people do business. So government becomes part of doing business, specially for big corporations, they can afford to overregulate the market and discourage smaller competitors.

- Free market is when government has very limited power over the economy, preferably not even having a central bank, so corporations don't bother associating with government, there's no power there, nothing to gain from it.

Saying free markets eventually degrade into chaos and violence is like saying, "freedom of religion will lead humanity into an era of endless holy wars".

I found it amusing when you said "a system based on absolute competition", a typically biased socialist characterization of capitalism. You won't ever find in the history of humanity a social system that fosters more cooperation than capitalism. Markets are comprised mostly of people exchanging lots of goods and services with each other, and there is nothing more cooperative than free trade. Competition is not the rule of capitalism, it's a disparity: when there are too many options, there is competition for cooperation.

P.S: I ain't fallin' for your trollin'!

He could have mentioned that Germany has a working fiscal union as well, it is a Federal Republic after all. Domestic tranfers between the states is a very successful and popular mechanism, or at least it used to be until a few weeks ago.

But I wanted to point out something else. Germany, with its export-centered economy, is the last country in Europe that could afford general austerity in the peripheral states or the union as a whole. The resulting decline in demand would cripple the German economy more than anything else. The European free-trade zone is paramount to German interests. So why the fuck would they push these extreme austerity measures on GIPSI? Not to mention that avoiding austerity works much better, as shown by Argentina and most recently Iceland.

But it's not just austerity that is being forced upon the periphery. The German proposal to install a European Commissionar to run Greece's finances has raised the stakes enormously. Forfeiture of national sovereignty, that's one fucked up idea of solving problems. Both default and austerity have severe economical consequences for Greece. But austerity and losing sovereignty would add a whole new dimension to the European crisis. Greeks are no strangers to being occupied by foreign powers, particularly the Germans. That's one explosive mixture we're talking about.

Plus, democratically elected governments in Greece and Italy were already replaced by technocrats, so what the hell are we doing here?

A. Overly simplistic, and you're confusing to some degree what is Keynesian. A central tenant of Keynesian economics is counter-cyclical budget deficits. When there's a recession, the government should run deficits, and the larger the recession, the larger the corresponding deficit. That's been a non-stop, although admittedly abused, government policy since the Depression. Also, Keynesian economics had components in it for monetary policy as well. Keynes advocated for lower interest rates during times of recession along with increasing the monetary supply. Yes, he did believe that during more severe recessions that monetary measures would not be enough, but he nevertheless advocated for the various monetary policies. These align up with most recessions as far as what the gov't did from the Great Depression on. Just because Keynesian policies disappointed during the 1970's, the ideas were not altogether abandoned ever since. The simple fact of the matter is aside from 2007, there hadn't been a particularly severe recession since the 1970s, so it's reasonable to assume that direct employment wasn't deemed necessary, not that it was seen as bad policy in all cases.

B. It happened to me by the hand of Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they didn't have flunky MBAs. ;-)

C. There are a lot of similar issues involved. My point was only that you can't just tie requirements to it, and that's that. There are a huge myriad of issues that would come hand in hand with stipulations to unemployment. Your idea is still something I'd be onboard with if those devils in the details were addressed. I do see as an example that some people become unemployed because of structural changes to the economy that causes their jobs to never come back. As a case in point, textile factory workers who lose their jobs due to offshoring are suddenly in a position where market forces have no remedy. They lack the skills to get jobs in areas of growth such as more in depth computer skills, and likely lack the financial resources to get the education and training to get said skills because they're unemployed. This is a perfect example in my opinion where the market and free trade fail from time to time, and some force, likely the gov't, needs to step in for the good of everyone. These people would benefit from retraining, so they can get a good job, business owners benefit from increasing numbers of workers who can do the jobs they're needing people to do, and it becomes a win win situation.

D. The last time we tried no deposit insurance, it failed miserably. Banks lent money for people to buy goods and services they couldn't afford, and stocks on the margin. People stuck their money in banks anyway. The only difference is when fear hit the market after the crash, a lot of people, many irrationally, pulled their money from banks, causing a collapse in the banking system, which tanked the entire economy even further.

People lack the time and/or motivation to stay informed on all kinds of issues from local politics, to PTA meetings. I don't see how they could begin to assess what loans their banks were making as far as riskiness. And the typical American when it comes to finances? Yikes! Next to no savings, can't understand how much they should be regularly investing, etc. And it's not just the stupid people. Most Americans don't even know what a mutual fund actually is. How could they possibly make intelligent decisions about the riskiness of their banks' portfolios? I consider myself smarter than the average bear, but even I'd be paralyzed with fear selecting a bank based what little info I could find of their portfolios. Instead, I make sure they're FDIC insured, because that in and of itself entails objective benchmarks to even get that insurance.

And honestly, I don't see many people making decisions about their banks based on rates alone. As a case in point, very few people I know put money in online high yield savings accounts instead of the local credit union, bank, or large megabank, despite the fact that in most cases online savings account providers such as ING Direct pay 2-3 times the interest. I don't believe that's what caused the madness in the banking industry at all. At the very least, there's a massive list of causes well above FDIC insurance, and even if FDIC insurance did play a role in causing the crisis, it also served well in preventing runs on the banks in general that would have compounded the crisis further.

>> ^bmacs27:

@heropsycho
A. Because we've been leaning on monetary policy as our intervention of choice. Direct employment has been called socialism for 30 years. That doesn't suggest a dominant Keynesian ideology. Really it's been this mix of monetarism and supply-side economics which morphed into some mutilated crony-capitalism.
B. I suppose it could happen, but it would take a rough business climate, or some flunky MBAs. In that situation I'd try to increase my business (i.e. make $200,000).
C. That's why we have food stamps. It isn't a perfect solution, but the kid starves if her folks spend the whole check on smokes too. Vices aren't the kind of "demand side" stimulus I'd like to see (one flaw in the Keynesian argument given the current living conditions of the American poor).
D. I really do believe that if the FDIC didn't exist, "the market" would not have allowed deposits to be leveraged by banks investing in exotic financial instruments. Like you said, even the bankers didn't know what the hell they were doing! Without the FDIC people would very quickly ask, "what the hell you doin' with my money?" Rather, since their money is backed by the government they ask, "what sorts of rates are you offering?" It's that pressure from the distorted marketplace that pushed banks into more and more leverage to stay competitive. Those rates were realized by making massively leveraged bets that were only possible by hedging with exotic instruments. Once upon a time people knew their banker. I think that's the best FDIC there could be. There might be some legal patchwork of the Glass-Steagall flavor that might make it work, but chasing down all the unintended consequences would be a challenge. Certainly figuring out how to unwind all the securitized mortgages that already exist makes that sort of policy direction seemingly prohibitive.
F-. Dude, Peter Schiff is a quack.

>> ^RedSky:

>> ^heropsycho:
They're both fools. Both offered overly simplistic rationalizations for complex issues, or sometimes didn't even offer that.

x2, x3, x4.
The argument oscillated between being against free trade and disbanding massive government departments because they're inefficient rather than reforming them. In other words there was no actual discussion and it was just two people shouting separate ideas at each other.


x5

>> ^heropsycho:

They're both fools. Both offered overly simplistic rationalizations for complex issues, or sometimes didn't even offer that.


x2, x3, x4.

The argument oscillated between being against free trade and disbanding massive government departments because they're inefficient rather than reforming them. In other words there was no actual discussion and it was just two people shouting separate ideas at each other.

Wait, you mean you're unhappy that the government was unable to enforce it's regulations and restrictions on international free trade?

Why?

i'm cynical.
I expect Obama to pass free trade with Columbia, (which slaughters union members), Panama, which is a tax haven, and Korea (millions of skilled workers at low wages)

The full range of his arguments are not entirely clear to me, but here's what I got.

1) Free trade leads us to send jobs and money overseas.

2) Crappy tax code means the rich are amassing huge fortunes while the rest of us face service cuts in the face of our deficit.

3) We spend lots of money covering the losses of banks.

4) Politicians who go against special interests get thrown out of office.

To which I could respond:

1) Free trade also makes imports cheap. If they raised tariffs and TVs and cellphones doubled in price, would we all thank the government for making American businesses more competitive? Back when it was actually possible to buy American did people do it? No. They went to wall-mart to save $5.

2) We voted for it. How many democrats have we seen clobbered at the ballot box because they presumed to raise taxes on the rich? The only Democrats who have won the presidency in my lifetime have done it by putting as little daylight as possible between themselves and their opponents on tax policy.

3) When banks fail we have recessions. When we have recessions, we vote out whoever is in charge. Thus, the government borrows and spends and bails as much as it can to minimize the cyclic nature inherent in any market economy. Is this good for long term competitiveness, growth, or our national finances? No. Does this stop voters (from both parties) from demanding that the government "fix" every economic downturn immediately? No.

4) Do special interests get special votes? No. They just put lots of (generally dishonest) advertising on the air, and voters are too lazy or too stupid to determine what is true and what is not.

In summary, why does our government inflict these horrible policies on us? Why do they suffer from such gridlock? Because we ask them too. We like living on borrowed money to buy cheap crap that distracts us from the difficult truths that a more responsible electorate would face head on. We have the government we chose and the government we deserve.

...if the left could prove that man-made global warming was dangerous, and there was a solution to be found to the global warming "problem", the solution wouldn't arrive via socialist edicts, the free market would find it.



First off, thanks for proving my point. You have no interest in hearing about any problem that turns your political ideology on its head. This pretty much seals the deal of what your motives actually are.

Secondly, this is a shockingly ignorant statement considering how many times the market has failed in protecting resources that can't be owned, and what benefits the general good, not specific people. Free markets do a great job incentivizing acts of self-interest.

How would free markets possibly work to stop human made global warming?

Time and time again, free markets horrifically fail in protecting the common good, or property that is not owned by anyone. This has been a traditional, valid criticism of capitalism since its inception. No one owns specifically the climate. Without gov't regulation, why would anyone go to the trouble of disposing of hazardous materials properly as an example? It won't make a significant difference for that one person if they don't do that, but it will make a difference for everyone is everyone doesn't pour oil into their backyards.

Why should businesses not dump toxic sludge into the nearest river? After all, properly disposing of these materials costs more than dumping it into the nearest river, which cuts into profit.

This has happened and will continue to over and over and over again in free markets. This is why it is absolutely necessary to have societal institutions that expose this behavior, and punish it as a means to prevent it from occurring.

In the case of global warming, just for the sake of this discussion, assume that yes, burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming, and that global warming is in fact detrimental to humans. Now, why would consumers want to buy hybrids, electric cars, or other vehicles if they cost more than conventional cars, strictly speaking by market forces? The only mechanism markets provide is to drive prices of fuel to be really expensive either from deplinishing supply or increasing demand, but those prices won't get driven up simply because global warming is occurring. Translation: in that scenario, the free market is not self-correcting. In fact, we can look through history and find repeated examples of how free markets fail to self-correct.

As the economies of countries around the world become more closely integrated through free trade, we actually see quite a bit of push against environmental regulations domestically for fear that we won't be able to compete with countries that do not have the same regulations. That is after all one of the primary arguments against the Kyoto Agreements. That actually is an indictment against free markets, because it suggests that if we leave everyone to their own devices individually, companies/countries will choose to not reduce emissions for various reasons, one of which is a fear of not being competitive because producing in a manner that reduces emissions can be more costly, which would reduce profits if competitors don't have to do the same thing. This of course is in complete disregard to what conducting business in such a manner does to the common good globally. The chief issue of course is China won't bear vast majority of the burden for not following these standards; it will be the entire globe, which causes a fundamental breakdown in market ideology. It's the same reason why subprime loans took off once the responsibility for granting a bad loan became divorced from the people who granted them. I could give a million other examples of this in a market economy.

The most effective way to deal with such a problem for capitalists is simply deny the problem actually exists. Your problem is you desperately want there to not be a problem to fit your capitalist ideology, so you will not ever be convinced that global warming is real and human influenced. This is largely because if it is real, it likely cannot be dealt with using market forces solely, and your ideology will be irreparably destroyed.

Now, I'm sure that means you'll label me a socialist/communist, etc. That's of course not true. I'm not married to any of those ideologies exclusively. In fact, I believe market forces work a large majority of the time, but I'm not blinded by ideology to pretend it works so well we don't need some regulation. This is just one more example. Go ahead and say socialism doesn't always work; I agree. I don't particularly care to argue even which works a majority of the time. I just use what works best for each situation.