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> a party that talks about free markets and then does car commercials / shills for stock / scams for cronies It isn't a good idea to do from high office, but a
by roenxi 2y ago
> a party that talks about free markets and then does car commercials / shills for stock / scams for cronies
It isn't a good idea to do from high office, but all those activities are characteristic of a free market. Sellers in a free market need to convince people to buy their stuff in particular and that involves commercials and shilling. Plus, obviously occasionally frauds happen in a free market.
A non-free market would be, eg, if Trump banned combustion engines by executive order. EDIT Or a non-free-market action he has taken would be the imposition of tariffs and sanctions; after a few moments of thought to find a clear example.
- duxup 2y agoI don’t consider the state trying to pick winners based on their cronies wishes a “free market”.
- roenxi 2y agoWell that might have happened, but if it did you should bring it up. You're listing 3 things where there is literally no coercive aspect - they're persuasion techniques of varying legality. If the substance of complaint about government interference in markets was that they ran advertising campaigns that'd be so close to a free market utopia there'd be no point complaining.
- duxup 2y agoI don’t understand your approach here. If it isn’t a “free market utopia” we what? Shouldn’t talk about it or something? This seems like an argument about being unable to reach perfection in the face of a far worse situation?
- roenxi 2y ago> If it isn’t a “free market utopia” we [want]? Shouldn’t talk about it or something? The US is a long way from a free market. 40% of the GDP is directly controlled by government spending (probably over half the economy is controlled by the government if we count distortions caused by private sector spending in support public spending) and there are substantial limitations placed on what is left by a complex web of legislation. And of the parts of the economy that isn't officially government-controlled, the US healthcare system is some sort of bizarre Frankenstein's monster of a planned economic system where nobody knows who the planners are, the financial markets are partially centrally controlled too where the Fed keeps putting their finger on the scale of how investment flows move. Housing isn't too terrible but the details are a mess of non-free markets. Those are the issues that are important. Whether the Federal government runs some advertising on a political basis doesn't rate on the hypocrisy scale, it is far too minor. And advertising is already a pro-free-market approach. There isn't a discrepancy between their words and actions on the topics you bought up. That isn't to say it is good behaviour, because it isn't. But it is free-market behaviour.
- duxup 2y agoIf you’re concerned with maintaining any kind of free market, corruption is always a cause for concern.
- czzr 2y agoThere are different ways to allocate resources in a society. They have different trade-offs and failure modes, and the best systems try to solve problems using the right allocation mechanism (so, mining copper -> free market, building computers -> free market, water rights -> tightly regulated and/or government controlled, utility networks -> tightly regulated, setting interest rates -> independent central bank, national defense -> government controlled, and so on). Reducing that to free markets = good, governments = bad (or vice versa) is a truly terrible way to think about effective society design.
- marcusverus 2y agoAnd to think, our free market survived for decades under the weight of thousands of pages of regulations--only to break down due to a photo op on the White House lawn!