4 ms·

Neither does no planning and complete decentralization (no national industrial policy, no trade barriers, letting important supply chains move out of your contr

by PKop 4y ago

Neither does no planning and complete decentralization (no national industrial policy, no trade barriers, letting important supply chains move out of your control or even into the borders of your adversaries).

Proven 4y ago
WalterBright 4y ago
Actually, the chaos of the free market works very, very well at producing the most prosperous countries ever seen.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Which country are you referring to? I rather suspect that their government is a good deal less hands off than you're implying.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The US is a fine example, especially the first century.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      Very nearly the first piece of legislation passed after the ratification of the constitution was a tariff.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        The market works in spite of bad legislation not because of it
    - lupire 4y ago
      You can low price tickets for Hamilton now. It's a great show and has some interesting bits Hamilton's contribution to, as fictional James Madison put it "nothing less than government control".
    - SantalBlush 4y ago
      It's never worth discussing political economy with die-hard free market types, because the they claim the US is a free market when it suits them, then deny it's a free market (calling it "crony capitalism", for example) if you point out legitimate flaws in the economic system. Not to mention, the notion that the US was a free market at any point in its history is unequivocally false, and anyone who thinks a system that observes slavery qualifies as a free market should be embarrassed.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        The US was never a 100% free market. But it was pretty close, and the beauty of a free market is the closer it is, the better it works. > anyone who thinks a system that observes slavery qualifies as a free market should be embarrassed. I usually say "excluding the slave south". Nevertheless, let's compare the slave south with the free north. The free north economically buried the slave south, which was a major cause of the southern rebellion. They wanted to protect their economy from the depredations of free labor. The south lost the war because the north buried them with arms and supplies and trains and everything needed in plentiful supply to destroy the southern barefoot armies. A similar thing happened in both WW1 and WW2. The American free market decided the fate of Germany and Japan the day the US entered the war, because Germany and Japan simply were overwhelmed. The US supplied not only themselves, but supplied Britain, France, and Russia, and still buried Japan with overwhelming endless supplies of everything the military wanted. The Japanese understood this (Hitler didn't), and tried to win WW2 with one stroke (Pearl Harbor). When that failed, they put everything on the line at Midway. The carriers were sunk, their best pilots were killed, the planes were lost, and Japan could not replace them, and everything went downhill for them from there. The US lost carriers and airplanes and just built lots more. Hitler lost WW2 the day he declared war on the US, in probably the stupidest military move in history. You can't win against a free market country unless yours is free market, too.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  Correlation may not imply causality here. Many of the most successful free market economies embody the concept of "was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." The United States and Canada had relatively easy access to territorial expansion, which offered them huge amounts of fertile, temperate land and almost any natural resource needed. They also started with a high-immigrant and relatively educated population. South Korea got to build their economy late enough to be relatively unburdened by legacy costs. They also had a Western world more than willing to ignore a series of presidents-for-life, domestic crackdowns, and incestuous government-industry relationships as long as they kept Kim Il-Sung up in the attic. Even Singapore had the advantage of being ideally located for trade purposes. With those benefits, was the free market necessary to unlock their success? Conversely, if you dropped (say) the American Founders in 1917 Moscow or 1948 Peking, would they do any better?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Russia has even more natural resources. Doesn't seem to help. > if you dropped (say) the American Founders in 1917 Moscow or 1948 Peking, would they do any better? Absolutely. See Hong Kong, Japan & Germany after WW2, Chile does better when they go free market, does worse when they veer back left, etc. South American countries have vast resources, but little prosperity. US immigration consisted of people in abject poverty, who arrived illiterate with nothing but a suitcase.
    - spiralx 4y ago
      But Russia has very limited access to viable shipping lanes and huge geographic barriers to shipping things overland. Why do you think Crimea is of such importance to Russia?
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Pinochet's economic policy is highly overrated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765771 > Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle". And that's from an ideologically aligned source. > This record is less bad than Allende’s, but it’s far from what I’d call good, and it’s certainly nothing that anyone should call an economic “miracle”.
- imtringued 4y ago
  The problem with this statement is that we don't have free markets. We have monopoly ridden markets.
- chubs 4y ago
  Lovely to hear this kind of thing on HN :) The free market looks like 'chaos' because it has millions of people making economic prioritisation decisions, as opposed to a control economy with few people. Millions of people making prioritising inputs vs a few, leads to a far more effectively prioritised economy, surely. And the proof is in the pudding!
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Sometimes I think I'm the only person on HN who writes anything positive about free markets, which are the source of the great wealth in the United States and some other countries. I really don't understand the romance with leftism, where the historical record of its implementations is pretty miserable.

by PKop 4y ago

Proven 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

Actually, the chaos of the free market works very, very well at producing the most prosperous countries ever seen.

thfuran 4y ago
Which country are you referring to? I rather suspect that their government is a good deal less hands off than you're implying.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The US is a fine example, especially the first century.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    Very nearly the first piece of legislation passed after the ratification of the constitution was a tariff.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      The market works in spite of bad legislation not because of it
  - lupire 4y ago
    You can low price tickets for Hamilton now. It's a great show and has some interesting bits Hamilton's contribution to, as fictional James Madison put it "nothing less than government control".
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    It's never worth discussing political economy with die-hard free market types, because the they claim the US is a free market when it suits them, then deny it's a free market (calling it "crony capitalism", for example) if you point out legitimate flaws in the economic system. Not to mention, the notion that the US was a free market at any point in its history is unequivocally false, and anyone who thinks a system that observes slavery qualifies as a free market should be embarrassed.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The US was never a 100% free market. But it was pretty close, and the beauty of a free market is the closer it is, the better it works. > anyone who thinks a system that observes slavery qualifies as a free market should be embarrassed. I usually say "excluding the slave south". Nevertheless, let's compare the slave south with the free north. The free north economically buried the slave south, which was a major cause of the southern rebellion. They wanted to protect their economy from the depredations of free labor. The south lost the war because the north buried them with arms and supplies and trains and everything needed in plentiful supply to destroy the southern barefoot armies. A similar thing happened in both WW1 and WW2. The American free market decided the fate of Germany and Japan the day the US entered the war, because Germany and Japan simply were overwhelmed. The US supplied not only themselves, but supplied Britain, France, and Russia, and still buried Japan with overwhelming endless supplies of everything the military wanted. The Japanese understood this (Hitler didn't), and tried to win WW2 with one stroke (Pearl Harbor). When that failed, they put everything on the line at Midway. The carriers were sunk, their best pilots were killed, the planes were lost, and Japan could not replace them, and everything went downhill for them from there. The US lost carriers and airplanes and just built lots more. Hitler lost WW2 the day he declared war on the US, in probably the stupidest military move in history. You can't win against a free market country unless yours is free market, too.
hakfoo 4y ago
Correlation may not imply causality here. Many of the most successful free market economies embody the concept of "was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." The United States and Canada had relatively easy access to territorial expansion, which offered them huge amounts of fertile, temperate land and almost any natural resource needed. They also started with a high-immigrant and relatively educated population. South Korea got to build their economy late enough to be relatively unburdened by legacy costs. They also had a Western world more than willing to ignore a series of presidents-for-life, domestic crackdowns, and incestuous government-industry relationships as long as they kept Kim Il-Sung up in the attic. Even Singapore had the advantage of being ideally located for trade purposes. With those benefits, was the free market necessary to unlock their success? Conversely, if you dropped (say) the American Founders in 1917 Moscow or 1948 Peking, would they do any better?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Russia has even more natural resources. Doesn't seem to help. > if you dropped (say) the American Founders in 1917 Moscow or 1948 Peking, would they do any better? Absolutely. See Hong Kong, Japan & Germany after WW2, Chile does better when they go free market, does worse when they veer back left, etc. South American countries have vast resources, but little prosperity. US immigration consisted of people in abject poverty, who arrived illiterate with nothing but a suitcase.
  - spiralx 4y ago
    But Russia has very limited access to viable shipping lanes and huge geographic barriers to shipping things overland. Why do you think Crimea is of such importance to Russia?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Pinochet's economic policy is highly overrated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32765771 > Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle". And that's from an ideologically aligned source. > This record is less bad than Allende’s, but it’s far from what I’d call good, and it’s certainly nothing that anyone should call an economic “miracle”.
imtringued 4y ago
The problem with this statement is that we don't have free markets. We have monopoly ridden markets.
chubs 4y ago
Lovely to hear this kind of thing on HN :) The free market looks like 'chaos' because it has millions of people making economic prioritisation decisions, as opposed to a control economy with few people. Millions of people making prioritising inputs vs a few, leads to a far more effectively prioritised economy, surely. And the proof is in the pudding!
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Sometimes I think I'm the only person on HN who writes anything positive about free markets, which are the source of the great wealth in the United States and some other countries. I really don't understand the romance with leftism, where the historical record of its implementations is pretty miserable.