On Dec 7, 2007 9:17 AM, David B. Shemano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I disagree. They are not one and the same thing. The only way you can say > otherwise is definitional. If I sell my car to my neighbor, that is a > conceptually different act than if I go to the voting booth to vote for a > mayor.
In some very simple activities like buying a car or voting a superficial distinction between market and politics can be maintained. At a very basic level a market cannot exist without a "quality functioning political system". The Austrian school certainly acknowledges this. In the Austrian view the political process sets and enforces the rules of the game and the market process determines the outcome. But it fails to recognize two things. 1) There is no single natural set of "rules of the game". They are determined in entirely arbitrary ways. The political process can and does change the rules constantly. 2) The market process is not just passively influenced by, but also actively influences the political process. It is worth noting that the political process is influenced by both capital and labor interests. Thus the political and market process are interlinked in a dynamic feedback process and cannot be separated. In the US this influence is quite explicit in the form of lobbying groups (capital&labor), campaign donations (capital) and personnel turnover between industry and government (particularly the so-called revolving door between regulatory agencies and industry). It is not that the Austrians deny these linkages but they systematically deemphasize their importance so as to maintain the ideological fiction of a separation between poltics and the market. It is not an accurate picture of the world and leads to wrong-headed conclusions. -raghu.
