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You are mixing up capitalism with anarchy and chaos. Capitalism requires the rule of law and property rights. An unregulated market is one where any voluntary t

by jules 9y ago

You are mixing up capitalism with anarchy and chaos. Capitalism requires the rule of law and property rights. An unregulated market is one where any voluntary transaction can take place and no involuntary transaction takes place. It is not a voluntary transaction if I put a gun to your head and tell you to hand over your wallet, and a "market" in which that is allowed is not even a market. It is illegal for me to pay you to deliver a letter to another house. That's not a free market either, because the transaction was mutually voluntary but it is disallowed.

s73ver_ 9y ago
Except that's not true in the least. You say "no involuntary transaction takes place" because in that system, if the transaction takes place, then by definition it must be "voluntary", despite the existence of any coercion that may have occurred. In your unregulated system, you could have me work 20 hours a day, and consider it "voluntary" as long as I did it, ignoring the fact that I and my family would be out on the street starving if I didn't, which would make that transaction far from voluntary.
- jules 9y ago
  The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary. No person forced you to work for me. I did not cause you to starve. If I disappeared off the face of the planet you would still starve. That I offer you a job improves your options relative to what you would otherwise have had. I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most. If however I put a gun to your head and tell you to work 20 hours a day I actively make your options worse by force. Capitalism is by no means a perfectly well defined system that you can deduce from a set of axioms. You can have a discussion about which property rights the government should enforce, such as whether it should enforce intellectual property. But certain systems are clearly fall outside of the bounds of what constitutes a free market, such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head to make you give me your wallet.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    "The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary." Only in the most extreme interpretation of the word. "No person forced you to work for me. " Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. "I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most." Again, that's not voluntary. That's exploitation. "If however I put a gun to your head and tell you to work 20 hours a day I actively make your options worse by force." Guns are not the only way to exercise force. Company towns were full of force. Just not physical. "such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head." Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy.
    - jules 9y ago
      If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters. > Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades their money for the labour of the other party. > Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy. I did not say that they were.
      - s73ver_ 9y ago
        "If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters." That won't make it any better. You're still hand waving away a lot of exploitation. "Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades their money for the labour of the other party." Which is a threat of force often used when the employer wants the employee to do something that may be unethical, or simply wrong (like making someone work 20 hours a day). "I did not say that they were." But the way you're phrasing things, and focusing on them, indicates that you believe that physical force is the only force that matters.
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
But if I put a gun to your head and tell you to get off "my" land that is voluntary? Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation.
- jules 9y ago
  You already broke the property rules if you went on my land without my permission. If I agree to let you on my land and then put a gun to your head, that is against the rules. > Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation. If by regulation you mean any law whatsoever, certainly. That's not what people usually mean by unregulated market. When people say "unregulated car market" they don't mean a market in which I can steal your car. They could mean a market in which you can sell me a car without safety belts. Another example is the minimum wage. Let's say that I want to offer to work for you for $5 an hour and you want to accept this offer. This is a transaction that we would both voluntarily engage in, but it is not allowed by the minimum wage law. If we include stealing and unrestricted use of guns in the meaning of "unregulated market", then the word becomes all but useless. We have other words to describe those situations.
  - TheCoelacanth 9y ago
    Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it? The concept of an unregulated market that includes land ownership is already nonsense because the system of land ownership is inherently non-voluntary. I never opted into the system where people can exclude me from certain parts of the earth; it was imposed on me with the threat of violence.
    - jules 9y ago
      > Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it? It comes from exactly that, and the system in which that occurred was not a free market. > it was imposed on me with the threat of violence. Absolutely, _the system_ is imposed with the threat of violence. I said that transactions within the system must be voluntary.

by jules 9y ago

s73ver_ 9y ago

Except that's not true in the least. You say "no involuntary transaction takes place" because in that system, if the transaction takes place, then by definition it must be "voluntary", despite the existence of any coercion that may have occurred. In your unregulated system, you could have me work 20 hours a day, and consider it "voluntary" as long as I did it, ignoring the fact that I and my family would be out on the street starving if I didn't, which would make that transaction far from voluntary.

jules 9y ago
The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary. No person forced you to work for me. I did not cause you to starve. If I disappeared off the face of the planet you would still starve. That I offer you a job improves your options relative to what you would otherwise have had. I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most. If however I put a gun to your head and tell you to work 20 hours a day I actively make your options worse by force. Capitalism is by no means a perfectly well defined system that you can deduce from a set of axioms. You can have a discussion about which property rights the government should enforce, such as whether it should enforce intellectual property. But certain systems are clearly fall outside of the bounds of what constitutes a free market, such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head to make you give me your wallet.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  "The transaction of you working for me is still voluntary." Only in the most extreme interpretation of the word. "No person forced you to work for me. " Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. "I can only "force" you to work 20 hours a day if all your other options are even worse, and I am the one who improves your options the most." Again, that's not voluntary. That's exploitation. "If however I put a gun to your head and tell you to work 20 hours a day I actively make your options worse by force." Guns are not the only way to exercise force. Company towns were full of force. Just not physical. "such as systems in which I am allowed to put a gun to your head." Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy.
  - jules 9y ago
    If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters. > Maybe not, but the idea that I will be fired if I don't do what you say means that it's not entirely voluntary. Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades their money for the labour of the other party. > Guns are not the only expression of force. Failure to see that is a huge fallacy. I did not say that they were.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      "If you disagree with this definition of voluntary, that's fine. Let's choose another string of letters to denote what I wrote in the previous comment, and change my other comment and replace the string "voluntary" with that new string of letters." That won't make it any better. You're still hand waving away a lot of exploitation. "Being fired is simply no longer engaging in the transaction where one party trades their money for the labour of the other party." Which is a threat of force often used when the employer wants the employee to do something that may be unethical, or simply wrong (like making someone work 20 hours a day). "I did not say that they were." But the way you're phrasing things, and focusing on them, indicates that you believe that physical force is the only force that matters.

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

But if I put a gun to your head and tell you to get off "my" land that is voluntary? Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation.

jules 9y ago
You already broke the property rules if you went on my land without my permission. If I agree to let you on my land and then put a gun to your head, that is against the rules. > Property rights don't exist without some form of regulation. If by regulation you mean any law whatsoever, certainly. That's not what people usually mean by unregulated market. When people say "unregulated car market" they don't mean a market in which I can steal your car. They could mean a market in which you can sell me a car without safety belts. Another example is the minimum wage. Let's say that I want to offer to work for you for $5 an hour and you want to accept this offer. This is a transaction that we would both voluntarily engage in, but it is not allowed by the minimum wage law. If we include stealing and unrestricted use of guns in the meaning of "unregulated market", then the word becomes all but useless. We have other words to describe those situations.
- TheCoelacanth 9y ago
  Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it? The concept of an unregulated market that includes land ownership is already nonsense because the system of land ownership is inherently non-voluntary. I never opted into the system where people can exclude me from certain parts of the earth; it was imposed on me with the threat of violence.
  - jules 9y ago
    > Where does your ownership of the land originate if not from someone at some point in history using the threat of violence to keep other people off of it? It comes from exactly that, and the system in which that occurred was not a free market. > it was imposed on me with the threat of violence. Absolutely, _the system_ is imposed with the threat of violence. I said that transactions within the system must be voluntary.