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> In practice, "free market" as a historically implemented policy has meant "remove all oversight and revoke any protections or governing laws and thus legalize

> In practice, "free market" as a historically implemented policy has meant "remove all oversight and revoke any protections or governing laws and thus legalize all business practices (such as scams, collusion, price fixing, market manipulations) regardless of ethics and hand the legislative pen to the business leaders to write their own laws. The rule of law is important for free markets and breach of contracts needs to be punished to have a vibrant market.

kristopolous 6y ago
Historically, those who legislate and wield power have not invoked it in that way. That's the point. "Deregulation" is code for taking hundreds of laws and dumping them in a garbage bin. "Privatization" is code for stealing tax dollars and hiding it in offshore accounts. I only care about the actual, real world material reality that has historically factually happened. The champions politic in a way that tends strongly away from rule of law as quickly as possible. It's a framework that gets invoked to go both ways. It's a vendor's "freedom" to not have to label, say, gmo, but then it's the vendor's "rights" to prohibit soy milk from using the label "milk". "Freedoms" and "rights" get interchanged to rationalize the preconfigured results. The dogma is a general tool. It was the "freedom" of agrobusiness to flood mexico with corn after NAFTA and run the local farmers out of business and then it was their "rights" to the marketplace when mexico pushed back. The farmers didn't have that same right to the marketplace, they didn't have the same freedoms, only international capital does. How convenient. That's why the zealots always think it's the right answer - it can be reshaped like a mound of clay to justify and rationalize whatever they want. For instance the sanctity of contract matters when it's with the gas pipeline company but not when it's with the american tribes When instead it's a pipeline of people via a subway through a wealthy neighborhood like the purple line extension in Beverly hills, all of a sudden the free market gets invoked to guess what? Reach the opposite conclusion. It's fundamentally a convenient power tool of capital. They used to use the Bible, now they use Friedrich Hayek. Skullduggery with the purest, most heavenly goals. Sure... In practice, free markets are lawless raw power that bend the state to do their bidding like some feudal king, but now it's wearing a bowtie and a cardigan instead of a sceptre and a robe. Same thing, different era.
- conanbatt 6y ago
  > "Deregulation" is code for taking hundreds of laws and dumping them in a garbage bin Or regulation is taking things from the garbage bin and make them into law. > "Privatization" is code for stealing tax dollars and hiding it in offshore accounts. If tax dollars are being stolen, it is the government that is doing both the tax collection and allowing the tax plundering. > For instance the sanctity of contract matters when it's with the gas pipeline company but not when it's with the american tribes What you really want is more free markets: that is, more rule of law, law that can be applied systematically and with no discretion and discrimination. You mention the enemy over and over: the coerced state that does terrible biddings. But you then exempt government as if it were innocent first and corrupted later. It is the mechanism by which you decide on economic matters by power that produces the vast majority of the issues you mention, way above the famous "market failures" and unaccounted externalities.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    Every business offense I mentioned is orchestrated through government. As a tool of exploitation and enforcement, they're utterly inseparable. Concentrating the gain + spreading the cost requires both. Capital and governance (CG) have been the internal organs of the body politic forever. Hacker news, facebook, an elementary school, every institution is CG. The theoretical framework of free markets requires the fiction that they are somehow separate and independent! It's imaginary rubbish. Corporations were started by the crown and modern political empires grew because of their corporate needs. They expanded together. Every. Single. Time. Always. The free marketeers think they can ignore all history and merely, through zero evidence intellectual exercise, derive absolute truth that needs no confirmation, measurement or testing because by logical deduction alone they know The Truth. They use rubbish homo economicus behavioral models, rubbish ideas of clean governance and capital separation, and the rubbish assumption that companies win by playing by the rules instead of the reality where they find a new exploit. That's why it's a scam. It's based on a classic scapegoating shell game and then uses classic cult systems to ignore evidence or question a priori assumptions. It's the same internal logic as astrology and horoscopes. Complicated models, no reality check, cherry picked evidence, projected interpretations, same thing. Total nonsense. It belongs in the spirituality section

kristopolous 6y ago

Historically, those who legislate and wield power have not invoked it in that way. That's the point. "Deregulation" is code for taking hundreds of laws and dumping them in a garbage bin. "Privatization" is code for stealing tax dollars and hiding it in offshore accounts. I only care about the actual, real world material reality that has historically factually happened. The champions politic in a way that tends strongly away from rule of law as quickly as possible. It's a framework that gets invoked to go both ways. It's a vendor's "freedom" to not have to label, say, gmo, but then it's the vendor's "rights" to prohibit soy milk from using the label "milk". "Freedoms" and "rights" get interchanged to rationalize the preconfigured results. The dogma is a general tool. It was the "freedom" of agrobusiness to flood mexico with corn after NAFTA and run the local farmers out of business and then it was their "rights" to the marketplace when mexico pushed back. The farmers didn't have that same right to the marketplace, they didn't have the same freedoms, only international capital does. How convenient. That's why the zealots always think it's the right answer - it can be reshaped like a mound of clay to justify and rationalize whatever they want. For instance the sanctity of contract matters when it's with the gas pipeline company but not when it's with the american tribes When instead it's a pipeline of people via a subway through a wealthy neighborhood like the purple line extension in Beverly hills, all of a sudden the free market gets invoked to guess what? Reach the opposite conclusion. It's fundamentally a convenient power tool of capital. They used to use the Bible, now they use Friedrich Hayek. Skullduggery with the purest, most heavenly goals. Sure... In practice, free markets are lawless raw power that bend the state to do their bidding like some feudal king, but now it's wearing a bowtie and a cardigan instead of a sceptre and a robe. Same thing, different era.

conanbatt 6y ago
> "Deregulation" is code for taking hundreds of laws and dumping them in a garbage bin Or regulation is taking things from the garbage bin and make them into law. > "Privatization" is code for stealing tax dollars and hiding it in offshore accounts. If tax dollars are being stolen, it is the government that is doing both the tax collection and allowing the tax plundering. > For instance the sanctity of contract matters when it's with the gas pipeline company but not when it's with the american tribes What you really want is more free markets: that is, more rule of law, law that can be applied systematically and with no discretion and discrimination. You mention the enemy over and over: the coerced state that does terrible biddings. But you then exempt government as if it were innocent first and corrupted later. It is the mechanism by which you decide on economic matters by power that produces the vast majority of the issues you mention, way above the famous "market failures" and unaccounted externalities.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  Every business offense I mentioned is orchestrated through government. As a tool of exploitation and enforcement, they're utterly inseparable. Concentrating the gain + spreading the cost requires both. Capital and governance (CG) have been the internal organs of the body politic forever. Hacker news, facebook, an elementary school, every institution is CG. The theoretical framework of free markets requires the fiction that they are somehow separate and independent! It's imaginary rubbish. Corporations were started by the crown and modern political empires grew because of their corporate needs. They expanded together. Every. Single. Time. Always. The free marketeers think they can ignore all history and merely, through zero evidence intellectual exercise, derive absolute truth that needs no confirmation, measurement or testing because by logical deduction alone they know The Truth. They use rubbish homo economicus behavioral models, rubbish ideas of clean governance and capital separation, and the rubbish assumption that companies win by playing by the rules instead of the reality where they find a new exploit. That's why it's a scam. It's based on a classic scapegoating shell game and then uses classic cult systems to ignore evidence or question a priori assumptions. It's the same internal logic as astrology and horoscopes. Complicated models, no reality check, cherry picked evidence, projected interpretations, same thing. Total nonsense. It belongs in the spirituality section