@rbar Spain is at most a mixed economy, with a monetary system controlled by the European Central Bank, that is very far from what a free market ought to be. It's another galaxy.

To me, coercion is the difference between bad and no choice. I never said it was arbitrary, so stop agreeing with what I didn't say, please? I have a feeling you are silently ignoring or reading something entirely different whenever I say the word "coercion". I won't dispute for now your impossible standards of what a choice is supposed to be, I think we have more pressing issues.

If by "powerful" you mean the rich, they can only set rules as much as government lets them, because unless they're criminals, they have no power to coerce in any way. Again, that goes back to the definition of coercion.

"all people always want to improve themselves"... have you ever heard of laziness?

Whether a person doing charity is asking for anything in return is irrelevant to the fact that the receiver of charity can be as dependent on the charity as an employee is to his wage. You are pointing out differences that are inconsequential to the analogy I made between charity and employment.

It's as absurd to accuse an employer of "coercing" an employee based on the fact that he needs the money to survive as much as it is to make you responsible for someone dependent on charity to survive.

In both cases, they are not being denied anything that they are entitled to, so there is no coercion.

No one is entitled to a job, or to charity, or even money to survive. Your right to your life doesn't impose any requirements on others around you to provide for your survival. Maybe if it's an emergency.

I don't understand your question about how to implement the free market on 4 products and 10 companies. A free market is not supposed to be tailored to a certain market, just as free speech is not meant to adjust itself based on how many broadcasting companies and TV shows we currently have.

@rbar I think I made a fair distinction between no choice and a bad choice. Yet, you argue that the line is arbitrary. So, when we say someone has no choices, aren't we being arbitrary as well?

When will that someone or a group ever be satisfied with their choices if we give them the choice of removing the choices of others forcefully? More importantly, What will be their incentive to increase their own choices through other means if they can just rely on increasing them through force?

If you mess with the incentives for people to get out of their own undesirable situations, people end up imposing their costs on those who instead made an effort of having more choices, thus establishing a moral hazard (good being punished, evil being rewarded).

It's easy to see any economic problem being directly solved with laws, but not so easy to see the consequences. Even worse, the moral hazard leads to people misbehaving, and that ends up being invariably blamed on the concept of a free market, specially where there is no actual free market to speak of, like when you talk about Spain.

One other thing, if I can't compare charity to employment because you say there is no economic reason to do charity, I can't tell whether you're saying that a charity is pointless or if people who receive charity don't need it. Probably neither, but I wanted to understand your statement. Can't a person in an unfortunate situation have her life depend on charity just as much as a desperate man who needs a certain job to survive?

@rbar in your examples, force is used to remove a person's choices, but then you equate that with bad choices. Bad choices which, in a free market, would not involve the use of force. So, are bad choices just the same as no choice or do we need to make a more refined distinction?

- No choice => Coercion, someone is denying you something you have a right to (like your life).

- Bad choice => No coercion, the choice is just shitty.

The classic example of "exploitation" is a terribly low paying job, is there any coercion going on? We can always concoct a moral dilemma where a man must feed his malnourished family, thus the employer ends up with the terrifying power of life and death over the poor worker and his family. Holy Coercion, Batman!

Would it make sense if I accused an American citizen of coercing children in Uganda for not donating to a charity that saves lives over there? Blame a homeless man's hunger on someone denying him a handout? Accuse an employer of stealing money from a worker if they paid exactly what was agreed upon beforehand, but paid less than what we think the worker "deserved"?

In a free market, you want to reduce the "choice remover" that is coercion. Whatever's left, nobody is being denied what is theirs by right, so they're all choices. It's up to the person doing the choosing to label them good or bad.

@rbar when people have only bad choices available to them, what we truly resent is the economic problem that puts them in that awful predicament. In principle, there is no exploitation taking place.

Economic problems exist no matter what policies you adopt. The only thing a policy maker can do is transfer (to someone else) or dilute (to everybody) the costs of the problem, but rarely without increasing them in the process.

So when you say free markets are only about minimizing government intervention, but NOT about maximizing choices, what you're implying is that government can increase one's choices through force... and, you're right, that's true ... but for whom, and at what cost?

Government can improve the choices of a group of people only in detriment of others, and not without reducing the amount of choices overall.

The tool of government is force, and that's what force is all about: reducing choices. Less force => more choices => more ways to solve economic problems.

@rbar the only definition of exploitation that really matters is when people are coerced into transactions they don't want to participate. Whenever you adopt any broader definition to fight against, you end up with more of that first kind of exploitation.

In a free market, the policy is to make transactions as voluntary as possible, maximizing options, which makes exploitation less likely.

When you argue that an environment is not right for a free market, what do you mean by "right"? Isn't that just passing judgement, just you implying force should be used to achieve whatever it is you consider to be "right" for a bunch of people, instead of letting them work it out without force? Wouldn't imposing by force your definition of "right" be likely more unfair?

What you said about unions not being involved with government any more than businesses are, I completely agree, because they both are very much involved, they both use force, laws, and taxpayer money to gain an unfair advantage. That would be unacceptable in a free market.

There is nothing arbitrary about the rules of a free market, they're defined on principle to maximize economic freedom for the individual. The only analogy I make with freedom of expression is that they're both freedoms, they have the same dynamic.

@rbar First you state that free markets don't work, then you say most systems are not true free markets. So, how did you realize they don't work if apparently we don't have them anywhere?

My guess is that you rushed to conclude they don't work when, usually, more prosperity is experienced where there is most economic freedom?

Assuming workplace mobility is sluggish as you claim, ever considered that maybe it's not something inherent? Maybe it's policy that makes it sluggish. Worker's rights are designed to help the employed, but what most don't see is that they do so at the unseen expense of the unemployed, those looking for jobs, and the employers. Ever considered that maybe that's what's getting in the way of hiring and firing people more easily (i.e., more mobility)?

A free market wouldn't have worker rights guaranteed by government. The terms of job contracts would be freely negotiated between employers and employees/unions.

Unions are, more often than not, involved with government, how do you think worker's rights came to be? That's the threat they represent to economic freedom, the same way a cartel would be a threat if it corrupted authorities to obtain undeserved privileges at the unseen expense of competing businesses and consumers.

There is nothing daft about defending economic freedom, just as there was nothing daft about defending freedom of expression back when no country in the world would allow it. Today we all know and enjoy freedom of expression thanks to our open-minded ancestors who cared enough to fight for it.

Moving this video to rbar's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

i like the ads themselves (they are dutch, some are even interesting) but i just can't visit the sift at the moment with the popup ones. like rbar says, especially the sound is just too annoying.

Fear distorts the human mind.

The brains of conservatives are wired for fear.
Fear of government.
Fear of integration.
Fear of financial losses.

The only tool conservatives are capable of using to combat these fears is ultra-aggression.

Hence, why conservatives demonize any person or idea that doesn't reassure or justify those fears.

At least that's my understanding.

>> ^rbar:

David has a world distortion field that is larger then Steve Jobs. This is not rational, its entertainment only. Pity.

Moving this video to rbar's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Moving this video to rbar's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

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Permanently discarding this video - kill requested by rbar.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012 1:02pm PST - promote requested by original submitter rbar.