What, Rome fell because they were over-regulating markets??  That's one I never heard.

Just look at history.  The state and markets are different only in concept.  In practice they interpenetrate, and they have done so increasingly with expanding technology and increasing scope of markets.

The notion of a state that only takes care of the roads is a nice one, but it imagines world in which all agents are both price-takers AND unable to mobilize state power.  In the real world, there are agents powerful enough to set prices and, in fact, to significantly regulate the markets in which they deal (and which they create).  Moreover history shows where there are not such agents, consolidation tends to produce them.

So a world in which the state really abdicated all of its current, very extensive responsibilities for coordinating and regulating markets would be a world where great corporations stepped in and did it for them -- much to their own profit and much to the disadvantage of everyone else.  If you think it's difficult getting your voice heard in Washington, try getting Microsoft or GM to pay attention to you.

But even that is a pipe dream, because someone would always be ready to rouse up popular demand for this or that cause that would, effectively, translate into the use of state power to tip the scales in this or that market ("tip the scales" is a bad analogy, because unlike scales, human society has no natural, neutral position).  So the state and some set of possibly competing economic interests, in any given situation, will always be the same thing. 

I am very sympathetic to the concern for personal liberty that seems to motivate many libertarians. But you don't have to be a libertarian to believe that the world is a better place if people are allowed to speak freely and so forth.  Their ideas of how the world works, or would work if only markets could be walled off from politics, is a joke.  What part of human society can be walled off from politics?  How?

Hayek flatly assumes that the only possible source of enslavement is the state.  Tell that to people who live in company towns.  There would be a lot more company towns if Hayek's disciples had their way.

Ender, there is no such thing as free market. I wrote a long post about that here some time ago, so I will try to find it rather than to say it all again. There is no such thing as a free market and there is no such thing as a small government. Also, to single out a current hobby horse of libertarians, all capitalism is crony capitalism, because anything else is completely impossible.

The ideology of so-called free markets exists mainly to allow powerful forces within given markets to regulate these markets in their own interest. But there can be no markets without regulation, it is only a question of who regulates.

God, it is rather sickening to encounter people infected with this libertarian nonsense. You would think that 1,000 years of simultaneously expanding scope of markets, on the one hand, and state power on the other, would be somewhat suggestive of something, but to these people, apparently not.

Not to mention that when Rome fell, markets vanished for 600 years. But of couse, the state is the enemy of markets.

See the thread, "US Election 2012", reply #72.

Jupp53 wrote on 06/27/12 at 10:09:22:



Jupp53 wrote on 06/27/12 at 08:02:47:


So if there was no capitalism in history, why are you saying that "eu is capitalism par excellence".

You can call it socialism or capitalism or whatever, I just call it Ockham's Euro, whenever there are 2 choices in the EU, the EU will pick the most costly, bureaucratic and anti-democratic one.

Jupp53 wrote on 06/27/12 at 08:34:21:


No capitalism is not a rip-off. Maybe you will understand it when you learn what really is capitalism because now you can't even distinguish socialism from capitalism and this is realy SAD.

Real capitalism is about small taxes, free market and small governments. If taxes are small, more peoples have job, they are creating more companies, buying more stuff.

In socialism taxes are high, market is not free- i'ts regulated like in EU (they are voting on stuff like percentage of fat in youghurt, standarisation of chair in tractors and other thigs, that should be decided between producer and consumer) and administration is very big - just like in EU with 3 capitals and millions of eurocrats. 

Socialism is an enemy of progress. In socialism is not worth to be better than others, because government will raise taxes for you. I have friend living in one of western countries, she is earning about 2k euros per month. But if she will take any overtime (even few hours!) her pay is less than 2k euros, because of bigger taxes! So what for work more? Anytime someone is fired from her job she is pissed of because she is working more and earning less. This is socialism and reason why Europe is in big big crisis.

Jupp53 wrote on 06/27/12 at 08:02:47:


This is not capitalism. This is a rip-off.

Ender wrote on 06/27/12 at 07:54:02:

Should someone laugh or cry about this lack of basic knowledge. EU is capitalism par excellence, socializing losings privatizing gainings.

Completely agree. This whole focus on paper value has been ongoing since the 80's and maybe 70's. Companies and banks got more interested in doing financial deals and mergers than in upping the production or thinking strategically about their whole marketing. Heck I have done business IT and I learned more about organisational issues, than about running a production line or warehouse. In the meantime in the governments the actual expertise has gone down. More and more professional politicians and less 'retired' businessmen or workers (eg Union leaders usually havent actually worked in the area they are representing).

So this week we have professional EU politicians come with proposal that they dont actually understand themselves. They will decide to throw money into badly run banks and financial institutions and take the money from the real economy. All the while downplaying the actual consequences of their decisions to the public (helped by the press who dont have a clue either).