On 1/13/2015 7:24 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
You're using the term "free" as if it were some mystical property like "kosher" or "halal". A free market is simply free from regulation from a central authority, that's all. The silk road is free from regulation. Anyone can participate, including mafias. If mafias couldn't participate, it wouldn't be a free market.
The trouble with the idea of a "free market", meaning free of government regulation is that a market is a place where things are traded. To trade something you need to own it. But without government or its equivalent you can't */own /*anymore than you can carry at a dead run while firing your AK-47. The first function of government is to provide safety for its citizens (mostly from each other). The second is to define and defend property rights. And governments have done it differently. In England, at one time, all land belonged to the crown. Even today a lot of real estate in England is not owned by its occupants, it's on a 100y lease from the crown. American indians didn't have any concept of personal ownership of land. Ownership of "intellectual property" is defined by the government and they keep changing it - extending copyright duration at the behest of Disney Corp. Stocks and bonds would be just paper without a government to enforce ownership.
Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
