23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

[sandinista]

Looks like an interesting book.

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market



What they tell you



Markets need to be free. When the government interferes to dictate what market participants can or cannot do, resources cannot flow to their most efficient use. If people cannot do the things that they find most profitable, they lose the incentive to invest and innovate. Thus, if the government puts a cap on house rents, landlords lose the incentive to maintain their properties or build new ones. Or, if the government restricts the kinds of financial products that can be sold, two contracting parties that may both have benefited from innovative transactions that fulfill their idiosyncratic needs cannot reap the potential gains of free contract. People must be left "free to choose," as the title of free-market visionary Milton Friedman’s famous book goes.



What they don’t tell you



The free market doesn’t exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them. How "free" a market is cannot be objectively defined. It is a political definition. The usual claim by free-market economists that they are trying to defend the market from politically motivated interference by the government is false. Government is always involved and those free-marketeers are as politically motivated as anyone. Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined "free market" is the first step towards understanding capitalism.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781608191666?&PID=32513

http://www.zcommunications.org/23-thing ... joon-chang

[Atheist-Lite]

I believe I took the red pill sometime ago.

[JOZeldenrust]

Looks like an interesting book.

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market



What they tell you



Markets need to be free. When the government interferes to dictate what market participants can or cannot do, resources cannot flow to their most efficient use. If people cannot do the things that they find most profitable, they lose the incentive to invest and innovate. Thus, if the government puts a cap on house rents, landlords lose the incentive to maintain their properties or build new ones. Or, if the government restricts the kinds of financial products that can be sold, two contracting parties that may both have benefited from innovative transactions that fulfill their idiosyncratic needs cannot reap the potential gains of free contract. People must be left "free to choose," as the title of free-market visionary Milton Friedman’s famous book goes.



What they don’t tell you



The free market doesn’t exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them. How "free" a market is cannot be objectively defined. It is a political definition. The usual claim by free-market economists that they are trying to defend the market from politically motivated interference by the government is false. Government is always involved and those free-marketeers are as politically motivated as anyone. Overcoming the myth that there is such a thing as an objectively defined "free market" is the first step towards understanding capitalism.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781608191666?&PID=32513

http://www.zcommunications.org/23-thing ... joon-chang

Any halfway decent introductory book on economics makes it quite clear that the ideal free market is an abstraction, a mathematical model that real markets approach to some degree. Economists are quite clear about this, so who are "they"?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

[Atheist-Lite]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

[JOZeldenrust]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

Division of labour is the key to our success as a species. We wouldn't have gotten out of the stone age without it. Likely, we wouldn't even have survived the stone age without it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

Interestingly enough, I recently saw a show that explained agriculturally advanced peoples considered hunter-gatherers to be a threat to their crops and banded together to wipe them out whenever they appeared. Further looking-into-it-ness required, of course.

[Atheist-Lite]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

Interestingly enough, I recently saw a show that explained agriculturally advanced peoples considered hunter-gatherers to be a threat to their crops and banded together to wipe them out whenever they appeared. Further looking-into-it-ness required, of course.

If only it was simple?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

Interestingly enough, I recently saw a show that explained agriculturally advanced peoples considered hunter-gatherers to be a threat to their crops and banded together to wipe them out whenever they appeared. Further looking-into-it-ness required, of course.

If only it was simple?

True. I wonder if some of the wanderers didn't band together in retaliation. Civilization trembled on the verge early there if the theory is correct.

[Ian]

Any halfway decent introductory book on economics makes it quite clear that the ideal free market is an abstraction, a mathematical model that real markets approach to some degree. Economists are quite clear about this, so who are "they"?

If you decide you hate something enough, it becomes easy to dehumanize anyone related to it. Then you can turn all sorts of people with ideas you don't like or understand into a "they".

There are too many "they"s in the world.

[Atheist-Lite]

Hey, I'm convinced. Let's try hunting-gathering again.

Back to basics. It went wrong when we stopped that. And nothing seems to have been right since.

Interestingly enough, I recently saw a show that explained agriculturally advanced peoples considered hunter-gatherers to be a threat to their crops and banded together to wipe them out whenever they appeared. Further looking-into-it-ness required, of course.

If only it was simple?

True. I wonder if some of the wanderers didn't band together in retaliation. Civilization trembled on the verge early there if the theory is correct.

The early migrations followed the coastlines and fishoil acted as a mood stabiliser. With most of the fish gone now the future is bleak.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The early migrations followed the coastlines and fishoil acted as a mood stabiliser. With most of the fish gone now the future is bleak.

Hey, I never eat fish and I'm just ...



Never mind. :leave.

[Feck]

The assumption that farming was an improvement over hunter- gathering is false . It did not lengthen our life spans or improve our health it was needed to support the increasing population it did not cause the increase .The appropriate use of dozens of different types of wood for bows ,arrows and tips fishing hooks shows a greater sophistication than most of us ever imagined .

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The assumption that farming was an improvement over hunter- gathering is false . It did not lengthen our life spans or improve our health it was needed to support the increasing population it did not cause the increase .The appropriate use of dozens of different types of wood for bows ,arrows and tips fishing hooks shows a greater sophistication than most of us ever imagined .

It also somewhat limited our diet. We couldn't go to the food, the food had to come to us, and it had to be the kind that stored well.

[JOZeldenrust]

The assumption that farming was an improvement over hunter- gathering is false . It did not lengthen our life spans or improve our health it was needed to support the increasing population it did not cause the increase .The appropriate use of dozens of different types of wood for bows ,arrows and tips fishing hooks shows a greater sophistication than most of us ever imagined .

Population can't increase without an increase in food production, so whether or not agriculture caused the population increase is a moot point. Agriculture enabled the increase in population.

And no, the diet that came with agriculture didn't improve the health of the individual human, but why should individual health be the yardstick of progress? "Improvement" is a normative term that is meaningless in factual matters.