Topic: The freer the market, the freer the people? - page 3. (Read 614 times)

Demand for this specialty has grown significantly as a result of recent corporate scandals. Everyone wants to do what they want The demand for Bitcoin is much lower than that of Fiat currency, which is controlled by the government. Bitcoin is not controlled by anyone and the price increases depending on the market Everyone can act independently because they are not under anyone's control Everyone works in the free market for exchanges and transactions.

Humans from time immemorial have always seek freedom, so everyone seek a decentralized market where no interested parties seek to control, this to me is the best, everyone just get into competition and we have the freedom to buy and sell at our given rate. Where regulation is needed is our daily basic necessities like food, water and housing, the authority must guide against bad actors trying to  fleece on the people.

It's more of a bell curve, on one side you have a totally controlled markets which makes people nothing more than slaves to their government, like it was in the USSR or in North Korea. Things like owning a small business or trading on currency markets, or flipping commodities were considered a crime punishable by prison or work camp. Even unemployment was illegal.

But totally free market with zero government intervention aren't good either, this can easily lead to monopolies, poor work workplace standards and lower salaries, no benefits for workers, lower quality goods. People will be theoretically free to do anything they want, but on practice they'll have no choice but to work under horrible conditions and have very little spare time.

I think that a free country desires in some extent a free market. But for most Western Countries where we see a high degree of "free" democracies the are a lot of force trying to change the country into more socialism. A real free market we don't see at all at the moment. Most countries subsidies some sectors while having special taxes on imports. Just looking at the trade wars of the West vs China or Russia, free markets are still a long way to go.

Not necessarily. Actually this might sound a bit communist but in every free market you would see a common phenomena of market being controlled by large cartels in every specific sector. This might not show an explicit control over the market but deep inside entry/exit in that market is absolutely restricted. But I think we should go down this issue a bit more. I think by free markets there are two ideas one is to leave the credit supply in the market un-monitored and unmeasured and let is correct itself. This correction would obviously take a bit of time until when people would suffer. On the other hand govt. injections and leakages in such scenario makes this method a bit more swift.

Second way of seeing free market is that there is no restrictions on entry/exit of companies in any sector/ any country/ any geography/any price. This I think is pretty much necessary if we are looking towards a globalized world. However this kind of freedom you might get from government but the key players of that sectors/ geography would still mandate the whole market.

Bitcoin falls in category 1 and I think that kind of freedom is easily implementable. But people already have this freedom they just get assisted from the government. This assistance would be impossible in case of Bitcoin. Moreover mountains that it has created with it's price were more or less results of over hyped speculation. So I think that it's myth that

Who said bitcoin is a liberal thing? Bitcoin could be independent from government, but it is not liberal. Now, you may think Liberalism and liberalism in finance is all about being independent from government, but that is for destruction of governments outreach to peoples jobs, not governments outreach to help people out.

I love bitcoin and the fact that no government would ever be part of it and could never change anything about it, but I also would love a government that has a proper tax, no corruption, and uses 100% of it back to public instead of enriching themselves. So, I am not against regulations and taxes, I am against current governments who do not use this chance properly and make it a personal treasury of their own, but the idea is still decent.

I think the market participants should be free to do what is right. The law suppose to punish those who do wrong. 
But you have to create a good law to make everyone do what is right. Without the good laws/rules & their enforcements, lots of people will derail from what is right even though they want to do what is right.
The good thing is that Bitcoin is built on good basic human rights and principles. There should be some kind of enforcement to prevent those who want to use or build on it from derailing from its main principles. 
You could further create good rules/laws on top of the network that do not go against the principles.

Hope you are aware that there are lots of bad laws in all countries. The CREATOR's moral law  should be our guide to creating good laws/rules.

There are things that you could consider both free and still controlled by corporations or the government. What I'm talking about is performing transactions with other people, whether it's P2P or with a corporation.

If it's P2P, it's free from any influence of a third-party because it's between the two people. For corporations, it's the same, send Bitcoin and receive a service of some. The difference that you could have is when you convert your BTC to your local currency. That's where banks, exchanges, third-party service providers are at play, and you are no longer completely free.

I guess it depends on what type you are transacting and what you are doing about it. I think this is just a small step to more application of cryptocurrency.

i think he was refering to manipulation and not the free the way you describe it on your own definitions  . if no manipulations the more people are going to be free   .  add in the restriction , because when we say manipulation that only means whales controlling the price but restrictions are the one that has been the government doing to some countries  . being free is a good thing but i dont get it why the op does want to avoid it to happen  . luckily it not happen yet  .

"The term “free market” is sometimes used as a synonym for laissez-faire capitalism. When most people discuss the “free market,” they mean an economy with unobstructed competition and only private transactions between buyers and sellers. However, a more inclusive definition should include any voluntary economic activity so long as it is not controlled by coercive central authorities." - Source : https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/freemarket.asp

Do you think Bitcoin is truly FREE based on the above statement? I think it only applies when there are private transactions between buyers and sellers and not when you use third party regulated services. All these KYC/AML is restrictions applied by governments to control people and when this is applied, these transactions are not private and free anymore.   

No. An unrestrained market leads to exploitation, through monopolies, cartels etc. The effect is to constrain freedom by restricting choice. In a capitalist democracy (which is an oxymoron, but never mind), a good government should act as a brake on the excesses of the markets, and work to strike a balance between market behaviour and the wealth, wellbeing and opportunities of the populace.

If you are saying free in terms of free to buy, free to transact both in unlimited way then I guess yes its a good thought and thats why community is growing these days. Tell you what people literally earn in bitcoin and keep the money as it is so that they need not worry to pay any taxes. They wanna save their margins like that way. With the time bitcoin payment portals will rise and we will see large number of transactions getting made over this portal.

There might be chance this free will spending will attract more customer / users of bitcoin.

For me yes, this free market brings more than enough and keeping myself free from other huddles of using my money.

The more people freedom, the greater their morals.
Absolute freedom is something that cannot be achieved, especially in the economy because the rich have enough money and resources to circumvent all restrictions and increase their wealth.
Even the development of legislation and restrictions will not benefit, the most important thing is to teach individuals how to compete, justice and humanity because it will enable society and individuals to place competition between supply and demand more fairly.

 And how far can we be able to aim the freer market? It needs to be balance. Whether it is the economic market or crypto market you are referring to. We can't be too complacent that we are freely using it to the most extent that we wanted. That is why governemts are trying to imposw some rules because it might be lead to  uncontrollable market worst situation. We just have to remember that , Not all free are good.

i don't see the connection to free markets. bitcoin's economic policy may be static and non-interventionist but it's just an asset or commodity. its economic policy has no bearing on whether markets are free. that is determined by market interventions, regulations and other barriers to entry, welfare entitlements, subsidies, cronyism......


if you prescribe to a capitalist paradigm, then yes. the austrian school isn't just an economic theory but also a political philosophy that embraces private property, the subjective theory of value, and political individualism.

often forgotten in this conversation are left libertarians---like mutualists and other anarchists---who embrace political individualism and free markets but reject private property and the subjective theory of value. most anarchists would assert that capitalistic markets are not "free markets" at all because they are hierarchical. this is the gist of it:

The more free the market is, the more human beings are free from community values, the more they want independence without the control of others. And unconsciously money becomes the main center of the market economy community. A free-market economy produces a market culture, produces a culture of the past, then produces a global culture.

The free market economy is the most responsible for the collapse of communal society and the rise of individualism, this causes the breakdown of cultural connections between the millennial generation and previous generations. Global trade focuses on using mass media as a promotional tool and there is media dependence on businesses that produce advertising. In the end, the controlling mass culture because the mass media are free to influence the mind and control their behavior according to the wishes of the market authorities. Everything from values, culture, art becomes a mere commodity and is packaged according to market tastes.

With human greed and never satisfied, free markets are only mythology of the past. For the US, which is a symbol of democracy and free market, finally waving a white flag in defending its title as a free market country, by conducting a trade war with China is a form of concern for countries that are members of the WTO against the onslaught of cheap Chinese products, which initially were of poor quality and now become quality products using high technology.

Simply put democracy & free market only exists in a country's declaration are only a utopia. But in practice it is nothing.

What market?The cryptocurrency market or every market in the economy?
If you are talking about the second option I think that market freedom is kinda overrated.
Having a totally free market (by free I mean unregulated) means that it would be easier for the bigger companies to smash the smaller companies and to create a monopoly or a cartel,which means that the market will no longer be free(the cartel/monopoly will smash any competition and close the market for new competitors).
Having moderate regulation by the government is better than having a totally free market with no regulations.
Bitcoin can't be excluded from the market economy.I don't think that BTC is totally free.There are crypto whales and big miners that have a certain level of control and influence over BTC.

Very "Austrian" way of approaching things. The problem is, beside Böhm-Bawerk, all representatives of the Austrian School failed in real life. The problem is inherent in the human psyche itself. Even if we seem to have a similar goal with Bitcoin, we all have our own agendas as well and some of them might not fit into the ones from others. That makes the markets unpredictable and need a certain kind of regulation.

In my opinion, free market represents the ideal and doesn't exist. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, so "the freer the market, the freer the people", but unregulated market is nothing more than a libertarian daydream.

Absolute freedom, that is, if ever there is indeed such a thing.

In real life, it is more of structured freedom. The same is very true in the market. There is no free market in the strictest sense of the word free, if what you think of the word free is making decisions without any kind of compelling influence from the outside. 

Freedom is actually neutral. The problem lies in that which is free. And in the hands of the ever malicious human beings, freedom would never produce the best of things.