On Free Markets and Government Regulation:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

One thing that does not surprise me these days is to see people making multiple millions of dollars advocating laissez-faire systems where they'd benefit greatly but very few others would. The question I have is a simple, if provocative one: isn't it better said that free markets are best made free by government regulation? The height of the Laissez-Faire era co-incided with the robber barons, and it was not a co-incidence. Bereft of things like the income tax and anti-trust laws, essential government regulations for any society making a pretense of freedom much less trying for the real thing the result was the emergence of wealthy and powerful men like Gould, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Astor, and Carnegie.

The "free market" system led not to freedom but to things like said robber barons calling in the US Army to disperse strikers with gunfire into the ranks of said strikers. It led to things like Black Friday, a known incident where a Robber Baron deliberately triggered an economic depression in 1869. The regulations that emerged under the Progressives, FDR, and the Great Society have led to a much deeper prosperity minus the brutality of right and left that resulted in the age of Laissez Faire at its finest, when poverty was also much vaster and deeper than it is today (when one out of every five Americans goes hungry).

So the question I have is simple: if Tea Party anarcho-capitalism gets its wish to rescind things like the income tax, like direct election of Senators, like the Federal Reserve, and like the various anti-trust laws that have been in effect for most of the 20th Century, how do they intend to deal with the emergence of latter-day Jay Cookes who'd have immense sums of money and like their predecessors would be just as keen to have Federal troops disperse any workers foolhardy enough to ask for their rights?

X-posted to my LJ and The_Recession.

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Dean Kamen, etc, are all stagnating right now.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

They would be stagnating if not for the developments within the government. Where would Steve Jobs and Bill Gates be now if not for the development in internet and computer development in aerospace and the military?

Besides, how far would any of the have gotten if they hadn't "given" jobs to people they employ. Jobs are not gifts. They are created out of business needs by mutual agreement between employer and employees

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

They would be stagnating if not for the developments within the government. Where would Steve Jobs and Bill Gates be now if not for the development in internet and computer development in aerospace and the military?

The same place they were 10 years ago or so, I suppose.

Let's not confuse issues here - the accusation is that the rich are stagnant. Clearly, they're not.

Besides, how far would any of the have gotten if they hadn't "given" jobs to people they employ. Jobs are not gifts. They are created out of business needs by mutual agreement between employer and employees

Absolutely. More reason to appreciate, rather than attack, the rich.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Right, because the wealthy class has a monopoly over the means of production, we should "appreciate" them.

I didn't know that the factory down the street I helped build was, in fact, built by those who had the means to purchase my labor.


The fact is that your argument can just as easily be used to justify the class of nobility in feudal society - after all, they had a monopoly on the means of production and defense.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Right, because the wealthy class has a monopoly over the means of production, we should "appreciate" them.

More that the wealthy make it possible for the rest of us to live good lives.

I didn't know that the factory down the street I helped build was, in fact, built by those who had the means to purchase my labor.

Yep, it did. Not every owner is rich, after all.

The fact is that your argument can just as easily be used to justify the class of nobility in feudal society - after all, they had a monopoly on the means of production and defense.

Not at all - in feudal society, rights didn't exist as we know them now.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Not at all - in feudal society, rights didn't exist as we know them now.

This is a completely different issue. Your argument can still justify feudal relation since the feudal monopoly was the only means of access to production, and so serfs should have been grateful to their lords for providing them with jobs &c.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Not at all. I'm not saying we should get rid of the rights of the poor.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Again, that's not the point being made at all in either of my posts. The point is that your line of reasoning is just as applicable to the defense of any centralization of power - once one (or a few) group(s) has that power, it is up to them if the working class can enjoy the value that it controls.

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

The same place they were 10 years ago or so, I suppose.

Which would be the definition of stagnation

Absolutely. More reason to appreciate, rather than attack, the rich.

As well as more reason to appreciate, rather than attack, the people that the rich employ. Nobody is doing any favors here. The rich hire because they need people and people get hired because they need jobs. There are no real favors being given here. Just mutual benefit.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Which would be the definition of stagnation

No no, I mean think 2000 tech.

The rich hire because they need people and people get hired because they need jobs. There are no real favors being given here. Just mutual benefit.

Then what's with the continued bitching?

[stewstewstewdio.livejournal.com]

No no, I mean think 2000 tech.

The 2000 tech was nothing more than a shakeout of an overextended industry, which isn't unusual in a new technology. While many tech companies lost in the wake of that, Microsoft and Apple actually benefited.

Then what's with the continued bitching?

I was responding to your bitching.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

By your standard the French Revolution and hence the fundamental basis of society beyond that of great landlords and starving peasantry is made up of ungrateful wretches and hence we should return to the glory days of feudalism. Ye Gods, Libertarianism is nothing but feudalism dressed up in modern language. >.<

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

To be more direct, it is the capitalists who employ people.

Most innovators like Gates and Jobs accrue most of their wealth in the reinvestment of the wealth they accrue from their innovation (assuming they were poor / lacking capital to begin with).

It is this expansion, which is exponential, which places the capitalist class in an unfairly advantageous position, and completely eliminates the "equity of value in exchange" insofar as the market manifests.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

It is this expansion, which is exponential, which places the capitalist class in an unfairly advantageous position, and completely eliminates the "equity of value in exchange" insofar as the market manifests.

How does it eliminate it?

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

By redefining value in terms of finance, which can (and is) manipulated, rather than in the form of commodities and services which are merely manifestations of labor.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They are stagnating. Why do you think that the USA is progressively falling behind other countries where illiteracy is much worse than it is here? If that's their idea of moving FORWARD?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

We're not really falling behind. Our broken educational system has nothing to do with the rich.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, we are. Things like neglect of infrastructure and health care being the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States and costing 4 X the defense budget are very much the fault of the richest element of society, who for bonus hypocrisy points wrap themselves in the cross.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Neglect of infrastructure? No, not really. We spend hundreds of billions yearly on infrastructure.

Health care? The entire premise (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/why-warrens-new-bankruptcy-study-is-so-bad/18834/) is faulty (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/06/elizabeth-warren-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-utterly-misleading-bankruptcy-study/18826/).

And what's this "wrapping themselves in the cross" thing?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That argument linked would be better if Miss McArdle didn't love Argumentum Ad Hominem. But that's the conservative arguing style these days. Not in the least pretense of civility only "I'm right and everyone else is evil."

I cannot name a single Republican politician who thinks that atheists are even citizens of the United States.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

That argument linked would be better if Miss McArdle didn't love Argumentum Ad Hominem. But that's the conservative arguing style these days. Not in the least pretense of civility only "I'm right and everyone else is evil."

Those are even shorter than the book. Try reading them.

I cannot name a single Republican politician who thinks that atheists are even citizens of the United States.

I know two personally, being an atheist citizen who's worked for them. Enough of that, really.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I did read them. I noticed much of her counterargument was not so much the methodology as her claims that the argument made was a lying deceptive one made by a lying deceiver. Her article had far more personal attacks than methodological criticsm, to the point that I was not sure if the methodological criticism of proportion was in fact criticism or another bit of how the person there is a lying cheating deceiver.

In a professional argument, one does not use those words. Sure, I could cite from a liberal blog something I agreed with or from Michelle Malkin on the once in a blue moon occasion I agree with her, but that's not an academic citation, which I assumed you realized was in fact what I was referring to.

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

McArdle is notorious for her sloppy theorizations on market activity.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

How so?

[ninboydean.livejournal.com]

Megan McArdle is just Andrew Breitbart with a broken calculator (http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/07/25/megan-mcardle-is-just-andrew-breitbart-with-a-broken-calculator/)