*quality *kids *doublepromote As a native of the Pacific NorthWET and a hopeless romantic, I found this to be infinitely delightful! Thank you for the feels @rbar

@Sagemind man i didnt even know that!
i was looking for what @rbar posted and the affiliations with the heritage foundation and the hoover institute.

political think tanks which specialize in propaganda.

so,nothing to do with JEW @Taint but everything to do with manipulated information presented by an apologist wishing only to skew the opinion of those wishing to understand a very complicated situation.

that is the reason to discount his opinion,not the fact he is a jew.

Post cannot be self promoted by original submitter rbar because rbar does not have enough Power Points. (You can always purchase more Power Points.)

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The narrator is indeed strongly biased, but the pieces are nicely divided on all sides. You mention there are bigger names in economics. Which ones? Id be interested in reading them.

In reply to this comment by renatojj:
Interesting article, I wouldn't call it a good summary, but a biased assortment of opinions. Economics has, unfortunately, become a very convoluted subject permeated by politically motivated rationalizations and borrowed thinking. Not all of it is lost, though.

Is there anything in particular that stood out for you that you wanted to show me, was it the alleged defender of free markets' expert opinion on its impracticality? : There are bigger names in economics that have stated the exact opposite, it doesn't mean anything. If you have doubts about free markets, bring them forward, try to understand at a basic level why they wouldn't (or would) work. I assure you it'd be more a fruitful exercise in understanding economics than to rely on foregone conclusions.In reply to this comment by rbar:
http://www.wa
shingtonpost.com/opinions/can-we-save-american-capitalism/2012/08/31/800de6be-f04e-11e1-ba17-c7bb037a1d5b_story.html

Nice summary of some current thoughts on free markets ;-)

Interesting article, I wouldn't call it a good summary, but a biased assortment of opinions. Economics has, unfortunately, become a very convoluted subject permeated by politically motivated rationalizations and borrowed thinking. Not all of it is lost, though.

Is there anything in particular that stood out for you that you wanted to show me, was it the alleged defender of free markets' expert opinion on its impracticality? There are bigger names in economics that have stated the exact opposite, it doesn't mean anything. If you have doubts about free markets, bring them forward, try to understand at a basic level why they wouldn't (or would) work. I assure you it'd be more a fruitful exercise in understanding economics than to rely on foregone conclusions.In reply to this comment by rbar:
http://www.wa
shingtonpost.com/opinions/can-we-save-american-capitalism/2012/08/31/800de6be-f04e-11e1-ba17-c7bb037a1d5b_story.html

Nice summary of some current thoughts on free markets ;-)

@rbar np, take your time, I'm quite busy as well.

Did East Germany have a great economy? Like you said, it faired well in some sectors, highly subsidized sectors I might add, at the huge expense of the rest of its economy which was miserable compared to West Germany (or to what it could be if it were capitalistic). Think of all the "luxuries" enjoyed right outside the Berlin Wall that were denied to east germans. Can you see purchasing or providing those products and services as economic activity being denied, and, therefore, less cooperation?

You have to question your assumption that capitalism universally strives for competition, or that it always should, or that it's the philosophy of free markets to make everyone compete. There are forces *for* and *against* competition everywhere in capitalism, from those who benefit and lose from it, respectively. I think that's what you mean by "near perfect competition", the perfection being the balance between competing and not competing as required.

Why are labor unions formed? So workers can compete less with each other and cooperate for better employment terms. Does that favor companies? No, but who cares, it's meant to favor the workers. Why are cartels formed? So companies can compete less with each other and cooperate for better profits. Is that good for the consumers? Usually not, but it's good for the companies in the cartel. Why are consumer groups formed... you get the point. These institutions operate against competition, but that doesn't make them any less capitalistic or contrary to the incentives of free markets, assuming they're formed without the use of force, criminal or lawful. A lawful association between individuals or companies to cooperate instead of compete with each other is capitalism at work too.

When you talk about situations where there is less or no competition, you're not considering the competition that arises on the other side of the demand-supply relation!

If there is large demand and little supply, you correctly point out that there is little competition *among suppliers*, right? However, aren't you overlooking the increased competition among the *demanders*? Like I said, competition is increasing as supply and demand differ. Who is competing with whom is beside the point.

You might argue, "well, how is competition among the demand going to help??", because it sucks to be in the demand for something in low supply, that unmet demand represents an incentive for more supply. Supplying something in high demand is a coveted position. Resources from elsewhere will tend to be allocated towards that coveted position, supplying that demand, and increasing competition in what started out as a less or non-competitive environment.

So, I don't follow your "markets universally tend towards monopolies" argument. As much as companies like monopolies, they like it because it profits from the clients/consumers' desperate demand for it, but these people are not ok with fighting each other for something in low supply. THAT is the incentive towards competition, towards destabilizing any monopoly that abuses its position.

The derivatives market is a complex example, but you're blaming the "free market", when the banking system is far from a free market if there's a central bank. Banks should be allowed to make risky investments and, if these investments don't pan out, they should pay the price with loss and bankruptcy, like it happens with any business that makes bad decisions. That is one of the best incentives to make good decisions! If the whole banking system is to blame for that, then it would collapse, which would be disastrous, but it would expose the disaster that is central banking.

Would the government want society to realize that central banking is terrible? Of course not, they're the ones who profit from it the most, which is why it stepped in with a massive taxpayer-funded bailout. None of what I just described is allowed in a free market.

Just like people realized the Church and State should be separate centuries ago, it will take a while for people to realize the State and Banks should be separate as well. The evidence is unravelling right before us.

@rbar I didn't call you a socialist, I don't know you that well! It was about your portrayal of capitalism. Also, I apologize for referring to free market capitalism, subject of this topic, as just "capitalism", that caused understandable confusion. I completely agree with you that some of those "isms" fall under a broader definition of capitalism, as they're social orders dependent on private property rights. Those who advocate free markets like me, however, really tend to consider free market capitalism as the only real one, while variations are just "less capitalistic" or not capitalism at all.

Any economic system is as cooperative as the next? Hmm... I don't know, rbar. Would you say there's as much cooperation inside North Korea as there is in South Korea? The old East and West Germanies? Surely any country with a lesser economy enjoys much less cooperation of their citizens among themselves (or with other countries) than a country where policy favors economic growth, no? Very common in North Korea, the "do what I tell or you'll starve in a concentration camp" approach, just isn't my favorite definition of cooperation. Coincidence or not, their economy is shit.

You raise a very important issue of limited resources, that wikipedia article on Capitalism explains better than I ever could, that counter-arguments to "those criticisms of the depletion of finite natural resources consists of the economic Law of Diminishing Returns, opportunity cost, and scarcity in economics". Interesting stuff.

My issue is with you portrayal of capitalism as ever-increasing competitiveness, because it's kind of biased and overlooks the abundance of cooperation. Imagine looking at a crowded night club and describing it simplistically as "a bunch of people struggling for the attention of the opposite sex". Seems pretty accurate if one hates night clubs. There is competition going on, specially for the most popular people, but what about all the other people enjoying each other's company over drinks, talking, flirting, and laughing, couples making out and enjoying the music on the dance floor? Who would describe those activities as purely competitive?

There is a lot of supply and demand in a capitalistic economy, not trying to sound like an economist, but competition is proportional to the difference between supply and demand. So what about where supply is meeting demand, should we just overlook the huge amount of cooperation happening there?

I find it amusing that you ask "What? What policy?", then, at the end of the same paragraph, write "The way the bailout happened is ... utter crap, but that is a different story all together." No, it's not a different story, the bailouts are government/central bank policy, partly the answer to your important question. Stepping in and handing out money to bankers who should have been punished by their excessive risk-taking with bankruptcy, is the exact opposite of letting free markets work.

To try to answer your persistent request for examples of free markets, if you didn't realize it yet, free markets are not very compatible with central banks, institutions that have a legal monopoly over what happens to half of a country's economy (usually half of all economic transactions involve money). Now, do you know how many countries have central banks today? Except for Monaco and Andorra, all of them.

Centuries ago, there wasn't a single country in the world where people enjoyed freedom of expression. That fact could be considered an obstacle to its adoption, but never a testament to its impracticality.

@rbar have these thousands of philosophers, lawyers and activists ever considered that, if people have material needs, they may or may not be satisfied in exchange for money, money that may or may not be provided through a job? What about other ways of making money, like being self-employed, a businessman, an investor, or a beggar? What if I can satisfy those needs without money, as a farmer?

Should the self-employed have a right to customers? Should a businessman or an investor have a right to profits, or a beggar to handouts? Should farmers also be entitled to good crops? If there's no direct and necessary link between job->survival, what, then, would justify it being declared an unalienable human right?

Your objection about government causing social injustice, sounds to me like asking, "if government outlaws drinking, how is it wrong to stop people from drinking if it's against the law?". If government outlaws something that doesn't use force, it inevitably uses force to outlaw it, thus increasing the overall use of force in society and diminishing our condition as a civilization. On the other hand, any force used to repress wanton shooters is a good deterrent to their use of force, no?

About laziness, your characterization of capitalism as "more and more efficiency", with no regard to human hapiness is very typical of a socialist's portrayal of capitalism as a social order of relentless profit-seeking and competition. When in fact, capitalism is the most cooperative of any social system ever devised. Markets thrive in capitalism, and markets are a bunch of people trading and making agreements with each another. There's nothing more cooperative than trades and handshakes. You get more cooperation in capitalism than in feudalism, mercantilism, corporatism, socialism or any other "ism". In the end, you're allowed more choices, including that of softer lifestyles in capitalism, than anywhere else.

The Libor and derivatives markets scandals, are not examples of free markets at all, they're abuses where the bad behavior was encouraged by policy. What you and I argued about making the weak complacent, also applies to bad rules encouraging excessive greediness and risk-taking that went unpunished, bad behavior that would, otherwise, be "regulated" in a free market by the very real prospect of bankruptcy, and being sued for fraud instead of a get-out-of-jail-free card and juicy bailouts granted by a secretive central bank (which wouldn't exist in a free market!).

Things are not necessarily less regulated when you have economic freedom, and anything resulting from deregulation is not an automatic example of free markets at work. Regulation just happens to come from the bottom-up, from forces in the market itself, instead of by force from the top-down, by well-intentioned bureaucrats who fancy writing human rights declarations in their spare time.

@rbar sorry I didn't see your last post. I think this UDHR is pretty noble but unknowingly evil, because it states that people have all sorts of rights, but what happens to the costs and demands those rights impose? To enforce them would imply a huge amount of force that would deny people of even more basic rights the declaration supposedly claims to protect. Take for example, "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work". Does that mean the price of labor should be controlled?? By whom? To see that policy enforced, would be an egregious assault on economic freedom.

My ideal is a society where most if not all of these problems that socialists and liberals are also concerned about, like people's material needs being met, living happy productive lives, etc. are handled in an environment where the right incentives and freedoms allows creative solutions and resources to be best allocated voluntarily, rather than by mandates that are noble and well intended, and seem to handle the problem in the short run, but cause a lot more trouble than they are worth because they destroy this very environment in which society thrives.

Your video of Noam Chomsky commenting on Ron Paul's answer in a republican debate, "what if some guy is on a coma and he's going to die" to which he supposedly replied, "it's a tribute to our liberty", is a gross misrepresentation, that was never the answer Ron Paul gave. I'll bet Noam Chomsky wouldn't like to be paraphrased into saying the opposite of what he meant, he just understood what he wanted based on his own preconceptions.

Watch the actual footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHY21VA8WE
(And please don't confuse a few members of the audience yelling "Yes!" with the position of the Tea Party (not that I care what they think) or Ron Paul's)

Before you talk about capitalism and democracy balancing each other out, you must first question what really happens when people are given economic freedom. A contrived scenario is playing out in your mind.

It's like if someone told you that if people had freedom of expression, people would just start spewing lies on top of lies and society would bury every shred of truth and dignity until it became unrecognizable. All I'm saying is that freedom of expression is beautiful, it's far from perfect, a lot of people will say terrible things, but it's a much better environment than censorship, and that it's not naive to expect freedom of expression to improve society with time, making truth more and more available and affordable to everyone, not only making our society more civilized but effectively raising our standards of living.

Only I'm not arguing about freedom of expression, but economic freedom.

@rbar Welcome back. You present a good definition of coercion, but how did you deduce that it applies to any situation where one has a "higher degree of power"? Did you miss the word "force" in there? Also, "threats" usually refer to "threats of force", the Oxford dictionary defines threat as a "a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage...", which sounds pretty violent to me. I don't think it was referring to threats like, "I'm not talking to you anymore!" or even, "I will fire you!". However harsh it may be to get fired, it doesn't involve violence.

Even if your idea of coercion has nothing to do with violence, I'm sure if you look hard enough though, you will find broader and more convenient definitions, but they won't escape the notion of denying rights.

Now, apparently you think an employee has a right to a job or is "entitled to something". What if no one needs what an employee has to offer, what then? Are the unskilled, the incompetent, and the dispensable, therefore, automatic victims of coercion?

If anyone with "power" can coerce, can you be coerced by a child's psychological manipulation? What about a person you're in love with, can they *coerce* you by leveraging your feelings towards them? What about a guy who is more qualified for a job than you are, is he coercing you out of that position?

If we just throw the word "coercion" around willy-nilly, we can pretty much justify anything a government can do to punish those perceived as coercive, and this punishment usually involves the use of force. So, instead of correcting social injustice, we'll likely end up causing more of it if more force is being used.

I need to refresh your memory on this talk of laziness, it was in objection to your statement that "all people always want to improve themselves", which you used to dismiss my concern about incentives and moral hazards in society.

I'm sure people give up laziness when their survival is threatened, but that's not the point of laziness. Rising above the petty needs of survival doesn't compel one to reach for the utmost excellence, that's where laziness comes in, people don't "always want to improve themselves", specially if they can live on a comfortable level by using force to solve their problems, imposing their costs on others. It's the lazy way out, get it?

Instead of increasing their power by becoming more competent, more useful, more productive, employees could argue that they are being coerced and use laws to forcefully remove the choices of employers as a way of giving them, the employees, more power. Having the choice of using force to solve their problems, would harm the incentive to improve themselves and that would establish a moral hazard: trying to do the hard thing, like becoming more productive (it's not easy!) would be punished by its very cost, while doing the easy thing, which is to rely on force to solve your problems, would be rewarded.

@rbar It's been a while since you last posted, maybe you're busy or lost interest, which is totally fine. I hope I didn't offend or discourage you with such different opinions. I just wanted you to know that I was really enjoying our conversation, it's always refreshing talking to someone with some intellectual honesty and curiosity.