On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 8:36 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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. > In the end, if the majority of people decided to misbehave, the government would be powerless. The reason the majority people do not misbehave is "software" that was installed in their minds by civilisation. Surely you agree that modern governments would not work in ancient cultures. We actually see this first hand, for example with the Arab spring revolutions, where democracy quickly devolves back to civil war or theocracy. The same applies to free markets. They could create a situation where misbehaving just isn't in your personal self-interest. But this would only work with a majority of people trusting rationality and educated in a fashion that would afford them the self-confidence and independence to prosper in such a world. Democracy started being viable the day a majority of people started believing in it. There is a very subtle but also very powerful element to social systems that emerges from what's inside people's minds. Telmo. > > 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. > -- 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.
