• maplesaga@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      4 days ago

      Is there actually a free market somewhere, or is it massive money printing followed by bailouts for the rich everywhere in the world?

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        42·
        4 days ago

        There can’t be a free market with a monopoly on violence by definition of the word “monopoly,” yet a free market requires the enforcement of basic rules (“no stealing” being the most obvious). Conclusion: “Free market” is a contradiction.

          • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
            11·
            3 days ago

            How so? Under state governance businesses are forced to pay a certain entity for security (policing) and other services through taxes on pain of loss of property. This is a monopoly on essential services enforced by violence, basically the most anti-free market thing ever.

            Okay devil’s advocate over, serious argument here: The monopoly on violence, by definition, comes with the ability to make and enforce various rules for the operation of the market. This is tax codes, zoning laws, labor laws, tariffs, environment protection laws, IP law, etc. The ideal of the perfect free market requires that these rules to be minimalist and “fair,” but that’s impossible to achieve because nobody can objectively decide which rules are necessary and fair and which are not. Therefore it’s always going to be possible to argue that such and such isn’t a true free market because this or that rule stifles competition, ultimately tying back into the point that a true free market can’t be subject to arbitrary rules and therefore is incompatible with the monopoly on violence. The two senses of “free” are identical here.

            • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.caEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              I still think that you are being overly literal for an argument (“There is no such thing as a free market”) that doesn’t actually get you anywhere. If free markets don’t exist, then personal freedom doesn’t exist for the exact same reasons. But to get there, you have to rely on the idea that “you can argue” without examining whether those arguments have any merit. Nobody takes “free” to mean “absolute freedom”. It’s always relative. This is a silly semantic argu… oh. This is silly. Damn it. Why didn’t anyone stop me.

              • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
                1·
                2 days ago

                I still think that you are being overly literal for an argument (“There is no such thing as a free market”) that doesn’t actually get you anywhere.

                It does. Whenever you criticize capitalism or the free market, you invariably get a bunch of “free market enthusiasts” arguing that the problem is too much regulation and too little free market. Any time the “free market” produces brutally exploitative living conditions and colluding oligopolies, the claim is always the same: “This is corporatism, not capitalism. Government interference in the market did this. We should make the market freer.” This is the idea behind the comment I was originally replying to, and my argument is a response to it. Since a free market is the capitalism equivalent of a unicorn, “this isn’t a true free market” type arguments are basically all No True Scotsman fallacies. I’m shutting down a common counterargument to criticism of capitalism.

                If free markets don’t exist, then personal freedom doesn’t exist for the exact same reasons.

                Yeah true; both “true” free markets and “complete” (only constrained by the Harm Rule) personal freedom are models with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the situation. Thinking of a situation as described by a free market is like ignoring air resistance; it’s not a useless abstraction, but ultimately it’s still an abstraction and should be treated as such.

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
      60·
      4 days ago

      Fox news is trying to make people think that higher gas prices are actually not a big deal and it just a temporary inconvenience so they support US-Irael war on Iran. If some people read this and think “yeah, higher gas prices is something we had to live with” and the go and vote R on November, that’s a win for them

      • humanspiral@lemmy.caEnglish
        14·
        4 days ago

        As Trump says, the total annihilation of global economy will make America (actually just the oil companies) a lot of money! Some trickle down to rich shareholders (if they only own oil companies).