How some think

[fpb]

This was actually published today, by a conservative commentator, as something worth saying in a discussion:

The truth is that we don't have a free market -- government regulation and management are pervasive -- so it's misleading to say that "capitalism" caused today's problems. The free market is innocent.The amount of non sequiturs, false

Comments

[expectare]

This is seriously the first time you've seen this? Heh. That the United States has a "mixed" market economy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy#Modern_U.S._economy ), not a free market economy, should be widely known.

[fpb]

That there is no such thing as a "free" market economy in the sense this man has it should be universally known. No state intrusion means no obligation to respect contracts, no obligation to deal ethically with customers, indeed no obligation not to do murder. These are all things that are not done because the State regulates against them, and provides formidable incentives not to pursue them. Were there no 'state regulation" (which is another word for "law"), mankind would have become extinct under the push of conflicting selfishness.

[expectare]

If it doesn't exist, then he can't be called stupid for saying that the US doesn't have one and that it can't be blamed for imminent depression.

[fpb]

No, sorry, you are being illogical. If it does not exist, it cannot be called innocent, since that is an attribute of things that exist. The stupidity is the assumption that such things could and should exist, and it reminds me of nothing so much as a Communist true believer. "Communism/The Free Market has not failed, comrades! It has just never been tried properly!" But by raising and settling (to his own satisfaction if nobody else's) a false problem, this man shifts attention away from real problems and above all prevents us from thinking in constructive and sensible ways about law and intervention.

Ridiculous

[fede_cba]

Of course strictly free market and total communism doesn't exist, but that's not the meaning of the words, the meaning of any word comes from it use, and in the daily and academical use of the word, free market mean a state who regulate little about the economy and just cares for public security, high school education and a few more things. So it's perfectly correct to say that free market caused a global economic crisis, because was that kind of economic way and not the idealistic and unpractical definition of you of free market what caused the crisis. You are trying to be creative, but you need to talk like an adult if you want to be in a conversation with adults

Re: Ridiculous

[fpb]

I suggest you use polite language in someone else's blog. Trolls are not welcome here, and I feel no obligation to preserve their provocations.

[arhyalon]

I have to disagree with you, I am entirely in agreement with this statement. Much of the financial problems in America were caused by places where the government had interfered in the market to cause an incentive. Once the government does this--like urging banks to give out certain kinds of loans that a wise bank would not issue--the situation is no longer capitalism

[fpb]

I never expected you to agree with me. But my view is that the whole area in question is nothing more than a verbal trick. If you like and approve of a state intervention, you call it law, and declare it sacred; if you do not, you call it regulation and claim it interferes with the sacred free market. But in point of fact there is no difference between a law against murder, a law against intolerable working conditions, a law against false statements on labels, and a law regulating prices and wages: they all are "interventions" of the State, "interfering" with the free market by exactly the same statutory and force-backed ways. To draw a line between them and claim the ones to be virtuous and the others wicked, is to disregard their own nature. Even laws regulating prices and wages have their times of being useful (in wartime).

[arhyalon]

Ah, but there is such a thing as a good law and a bad law. A good law against murder discourages murder. A bad law would encourage it by accident or perhaps punish some but not others for similar crimes

[fpb]

Thre are two things that I object to. First, the invention of an imaginary free market with no evil state intervention - when the market itself is a product of the laws and could not exist without regulation. Second, the claim that all financial disasters and crimes are primarily caused by bad state intervention. This, to me, is nothing more than moral escapism: blame the State for the collective infatuations of thousands of free agents who deliberately threw themselves into what seemed, at the time, rivers of gold. Not our fault, of course not! That some regulations are bad or damaging or dangerous I do not argue; that speculative bubbles and ramps are in any way primarily caused by bad regulation I will believe when I believe human beings have ceased to be moral agents. Nobody obliged anyone to take a stupid debt, but thousands of people did, and thousands of people - naively or worse - took jobs which depended on their selling bad debts.

[anonymous]

I'm late in jumping in here, but I'd like to point out that no libertarian (or free marketer) thinks that laws are unnecessary. Both Hayek and Friedman recognized the need for "formal laws" -- that is, laws that tell us "how" to arrange our affairs. The need to obey contracts, and so on, are all formal laws.

But the "substantive laws" -- laws that tell us what to buy, how much to pay for it, and so on (such as tariffs, price controls) -- move us away from a free-market.

So ... I do not consider the original post all that ignorent at all. America does not have a free market -- we have an overabundance of substantive laws (eg, fannie may, freddie mac) -- and the free market is not responsible for the current problems -- the lack of a free market is.

[fpb]

You might have tried to follow the discussion before you sent in comments that have already been answered.

Hmm. I shd like to see the context, please.

[wemyss]

I am old and my eyes are not what they were, but I don't think I saw a link?