On 14 Jan 2015, at 15:52, Jason Resch wrote:
On Wed, Jan 14, 2015 at 4:13 AM, Telmo Menezes
<[email protected]> wrote:
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.
On this topic, if anyone hasn't seen it, I would recommend seeing
the documentary "The Square":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2486682/
It gives far more insight into the Egyptian revolution than I ever
got through traditional media channels.
Does it explain well the two revolutions? Against the army, and then
against the Muslim Brotherhood? It is not entirely clear from the
trailer.
Bruno
Jason
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
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