Topic: A Resource Based Economy - page 50. (Read 288375 times)

I don't see any coercion in any of those actions.  All employees were always free to leave. As far as Shell poisoning water is concerned, since when was Shell responsible for the water there?  The state is the entity in control of water quality there, and I'm sure that Shell didn't have the troops, not Shell, so once again, the state fails.
Microsoft coerces no-one to buy their products or work for them, same with Apple.
Microsoft included a browser in an OS, no issues there, either buy it or go with Linux of FreeBSD.
So far, you have only proven my point that the state is bad.

Have you never heard the saying "Caveat Emptor"?  You and your ilk want a state to protect you from your own folly.



OK, so, can you provide any real cases where a company, not a government, oppressed anyone?

What planet are you from?
Never heared of Nike? Or Apple? Or Shell? Or Microsoft?
Nike knowingly support(s/ed) child labour.
http://www1.american.edu/ted/nike.htm
Apple likewise, but  they sure are no exception.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7330986/Apple-admits-using-child-labour.html
Shell oppressed people in africa that didn't like them poisoning their water.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/01/2013130214524796.html
Microsoft oprressed competitors and was convicted for abusing their monopoly on the browser market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case
All big tech companies use patents to oppress each other and the new guys. Absolutely massive waste of resources.

And those are just the obvious ones and not even really monopolies. If they had the freedom to become more monopolistic there would be worse examples of disgressions.
But companies misbehave all the time. On any levels. I could go on and on stating court cases where companies were acting oppressingly against persons or other companies.

What is needed , and this counts equally well for a free market as for a regulated market or even a government, is a way for society to control the future of any large accumulation of capital. If these large structures are left to themselfs they can become increasingly selfish.
 

There are free-ish markets in the same way there are prentant-ish women - you either are or you aren't. A free market is one where two entities trade freely, voluntarily, based on their best knowledge, and without coercion or force from any outside party. So, while they don't necessarily interfere, laws and regulations do coerce the trading parties into trading against their wishes, or prohibit them from trading entirely. One of the parties lying about the product, or holding a gun and saying "your money or your life," isn't a free market, either, since it is fraud/theft/crime, and the other party was coerced into trading something they normally wouldn't have. With those, we can discuss what kind of crime issues can arise, and how to deal with them, but not claim that "free markets don't work" because there are fraudulent exchanges, since, obviously, free, unregulated, unfettered trade happens all the time.



My concern is that when you start to protect people from assholes, you run into the issue of a nanny state having to rely on more and more restrictive protections, in order to deal with more and more clever thieves. And people assume that they are protected, so don't pay attention or do research, making it easier for thieves to get away with new ways of stealing from them. If people had to rely on their own research and knowledge before taking part in any trade, such assholery would be a lot harder to get away with. Plus assholes generally don't last in the market for very long, since, no one really buys stuff from assholes. They are assholes, after all (yes, I'm aware BFL somewhat flies in the face of this). Think of how many huge corps we have now who aren't assholes, like Apple, Google, Vanguard, Honda, and how many asshole companies have collapsed spectacularly once they were found out.


Here's a simple but interesting exercise. Can you name a monopoly, that isn't specifically a government agency, or is not something that is specifically mandated by government (like power companies in some places)?

And lastly, I would like to hear an example of a company oppressing anyone.  Personally, I cannot think of one single example of a company oppressing anyone, ever.  So, names, dates, and what form of oppression, if anyone has any real facts to present to back up their claims that free-market capitalists oppress people.

FIAT will go down, eventually, as there is too much opportunity for corruption at the hands of the state and central bankers.  Precious metals, on the other hand, will probably never go down.
Also, because bitcoin is distributed, and does not require central banks/servers, the only way to regulate it would be yet more coercive steps by states, like banning heavy encryption, certain software, etc.  The enforcement would necessitate some rather totalitarian measures.

Eeh, haven't you noticed everyone wants to regulate cryptos these days?
But bitcoin is not FIAT so will be regulated a lot less. FIATs are at the core of all western society so they requires a lot of failsafes. If a FIAT goes down all basic stuff around it goes down. If bitcoin goes down nobody really cares. Not on the scale of the world, anyway.

Historically, the assholes always got more free reign in centrally controlled economies.
ZeitG is an example of a centrally controlled economy, and any implementation of it would result in massive levels of coercion.
Read "The Machinery of Freedom".  There are ways to ensure some degree of justice, and have protection from coercion without statist structures.

Of course there are free-ish markets.

I don't see how reality is anything near this black and white.
So what's your definition of free market anyway? What aspects do you consider coercive? Regulations? Laws?

I have been arguing that when you start out with a free market that is not protected by some statist structure the assholes will win quicker. Assholes will be there, free market or not. It's just that a free market offers more opportunity to being played with. When the ante is small, that's ok. But when the ante is your livelyhood or your house, not so ok.
You will need some way to prevent monopolies without coercion. Monopolies completely destroy the idea of a free market. For a lot of things someone is going to be top dog because being a little better can get you all of the business. Not just because they are assholes, but because it is how the game of free markets is played. Monopolies give power and that will invariably get abused.

There's no "free-ish" markets. There are free markets, and there are coercive markets. If someone is forced to toil or purchase something against their will, that's not a free market any more. If your argument is that free markets can't survive the influx of assholes, then argue that, and we'll have a discussion about how to keep assholes out of free markets. But don't tell us that "free markets don't exist" because of what coercive non-free markets do. Because if your argument is that coercive non-free markets require violence to maintain, then yes, we totally agree with you. And we want to get rid of that violence, because we believe it's not needed.


I agree, people generally are not good at that, but giving them the title of "government" doesn't somehow impose more wisdom on them. If a person in a free market destroys the very soil he gets his produce from, he has killed his own business, and is out of the market. That's a damn good incentive to take care of one's soil. If a government employee or agencies did that, however, they are generally not accountable for that, since their salary depends on taxes from people who have no choice but to pay them, not from the product of that soil.



Interesting. We, market invents this crazy digital currency, this market gets so big that it at tracks hackers, criminals, tricksters, and scammers, including many ponzi scheme operators, there was a public outcry when things went really bad and ponzi schemes collapsed like dominos, yet no one stepped in to regulate it. So, is Bitcoin dead now? Is it continuing to exist in an unregulated way? What happened that it doesn't seem to want to follow your method?

Markets get hijacked by states.  Most regulations are there to promote and/or preserve monopolies.

Just so we're clear on one thing, Zeitgeist is basically just Communism re-dressed with new-age lingo.

Free-ish markets also consume much more natural resources and are the least sustainable from that standpoint. Also, our western 'free' markets thrive on the backs of cheap labour countries. Without them things would not look so free anymore. The 'freedom' of the world markets is enforced with violence. "What did you say, Saddam? You want to sell oil to china and not to us? Fuck you, we will take your country and rape it for decades."
Free markets can be pretty abusive and selfish. So you have to ask yourself if the prosperity justifies the damage they can do. At the very least you would have to be ready with dealing with the inevitable scaling problems of free economies. People with moey and power are in the position to outgrow all and everyone.
So this is, unfortunately, not an optimum by itself. It will grow out of proportions because people are powerhungry assholes.

So my assertion is that you cannot have a large free market without some statist control. Free markets can only exist within other structures that guarantee the internal freedoms. The problem with markets is that on the outside, and even within if the market becomes more complex, the market does not care. Markets, if left uncontroled, are perfectly capable of destroying the very soil they get their produce from. People, on average, are not good in these games and this allows a small group of individuals to win the market.
The normal historical transaction is something like this: Some free market emerges, market gets so big it attracts criminals and tricksters, market gets hijacked by clever manipulation, not by providing best product to where its needed, public outcry for regulations. Rince, repeat.
That is why markets can only be relatively free. They will always start to abuse their freedom and so we get these regulations.

If purely free markets were possible then everyone would do that instead, right?

What is the optimal distribution of wealth?

Well, you have free-market economies, which generally prosper, and everything else, which generally results in widespread poverty and death for those upon whom it is forced.

As to your assertion that the free-market does not exist, I can only sigh.

This cannot be true by any means. Evolution did not have a market to evolve against. For 99.999999% of those 4.5 billion years of evolution nothing changed because there was no man to invent the idea of markets. Without a normal market in the first place, evolution cannot select for a free market.
So it was only after humans started making markets that evolution could select for more optimal actors. But then the selecting force is still kindof vague. Does being a better free market actor allow you to reproduce more and survive better? Do people that participate in these free markets have more offspring? Because that's what you need for evolution to be able to act in any meanigfull way.

Just out of curioucity, can you name an instance of a free market that was not invented by humans but occured naturally and was initiated by some evolutionary process?

Talking about logical fallacies  
Genetics is not a method, it is a research area.
What we find in the field of genetics has absolutely nothing to do with optimizing resources.
Genetics is all about adaptation for survival.
If resources are plenty then genetics does not care so optimizing for resources happens only when there is a real need for it.
Most of the time genetics just provides for better ways of reproducing.

The human mind is many things but only a small part of it is this local optima seeker.
The free market is an ideal fantasy thought up by theoretical economists. It can not exist unless forced because the human mind, as you note, often involves coercion as a solution. So by your own observation of the human mind you could not ever have emergence of truly free markets, simply because human minds do not work along those exact ideals.
The free market does not involve coercion because it does not realy exist.
Tell me, what IS an optimal distribution of wealth?

Surely you would agree that getting resources to where they are needed is the more optimal solution for the long run for any society, right?
So how does free market make sure resources get to where they're needed and not to where people pay the most?
I don't realy see it happen.

Are you sure you are not just confusing the word 'optimal' with the word 'efficient' ?

There is no such thing as a free market. It is a fiction supporters of a monetary system cling to and try to make others believe is a real thing. A resource based economy does not rely upon "market forces" which are arbitrarily derived from the rigged money game, and instead uses science to intelligently manage resources for the benefit of all people. A market merely benefits those with purchasing power, and that is artificially distributed to the few at the detriment to the many.

I strongly disagree.  Free-markets are a result of 4.5 billion years of evolution.  To think that they can be "improved upon" is purest folly.  It's like saying the human brain can be improved upon.  Evolution may improve upon it, but humans a clearly unqualified to do so.

I think your distinction between "seeking optima" and "creating useful things" is false/blurry and unecessary.
By your definition, free-markets are rarer than things people say are free markets, or a lot of markets are occasionally un-free.
I mean a person held at gunpoint is free to choose some things but there is an element of coercion.

I generally find it foolish to believe that either a human creation or organic patterns of human behaviour are universally and permanently adaptive, and then there is the possibility that other traits may be more adaptive, more optimal, and yet to come about. There's more than one way to shape an arrowhead.  
Note that just because one trait dies out or does not dominate does not mean it is more adaptive. It took catastrophes to unseat the dinosaurs despite Mammalian's advantages. Surely some mammals were extirpated by more established reptiles.

Human resourcing today and the phenomena of  free markets really are amazing despite their problems, but I'm sure most people agree that it could be improved upon, or at least better implemented. Keeping politics out of markets is a false dilemma if anyone is thinking that. Every action is in some way political, at least while humans are humans.

 

A lot of logical fallacies going on here, and logical level-crossing.
Genetics is a method of optimizing resource use to achieve goals, and brains are simply an faster way of doing so than genetics alone.
The human mind is also a seeker of local optima, shortest path to achieve certain goals, which often involve coercion.
The free-market is an organic result of human minds seeking optima, and not a "creation" in the sense that a car, gun, or space shuttle are creations.
The free-market, also, by it's very nature, does not involve coercion.
The free-market has proven, time and time again, to be the optimal wealth distribution method, and as it is a natural result of the human desire to be more wealthy, as opposed to some clumsy system dreamed up by some ideologue (like Zeitgeist, communism, etc.), will always perform better, as it is the result of 4.5 billion years of evolution.  (Evolution = seeking optima)
 

Problem being that 'more material wealth' has its limits and does not automatically provide for a stable society.
A capitalist society can be made stable as long as there is space to grow without eating itself up , and i think we are running out of growth space in many areas.
Another problem is that material wealth in a world running on material wealth creates power that can be and often is abused for personal gain.

You do actually need some control over resources to create any framework of society. This is what most citizens expect before they want to freely participate. The question is more about how much totalitarian power such a structure should be able to excert and in what areas.
My opinion is that the balance between static and dynamic elements has grown out of proportions in many areas. It would be much more productive to re-balance certain parts of society than it would be to start over at one of the several available extremes. I'm talking here about our broken western 'democracies'. Other systems might need a more thorough restructuring.