Would free markets solve all our problems?

pharesim (74) in politics • 9 years ago (edited)

When I look at a lot of issues, I tend to think we cannot have a future without regulation

I have a hard time trying to understand the points of libertarians and anarcho capitalists. I believe in the ideas of traditional anarchism (Kropotkin, Machno, CNT). We agree that no government should rule over people, but that is where it seems to end. While I wish for a society of solidarity and equality, libertarians want to keep the social ladder intact. To me, that seems a bit like getting rid of the Caesar, while giving more power to the King. But I especially see so much violence being committed for money, that I even tend to think that we need more regulation instead of less when we do not reach a substantial change in mindsets.

I need opinions on a couple of issues to help me understand that point of view better. Please address as many examples as possible.

a nuclear power plant is shut down for whatever reason. why would the company care to clean up after them?
bottling water and selling it to the same people that had access to that water before and similar things are already happening. how would free markets prevent that?
most people obviously do not care about the circumstances the products they buy were produced under. Companies with the lowest regulations for working conditions, animal welfare, ecological management and so on can offer the best prices, and the majority buys the cheap stuff
does being born into a poor family mean that you should not get the possibility to the best possible education?
a lot of companies already do not care much about how their employees do in private life. When there is no welfare and no wage regulation, why would those give them more than the absolute minimum to survive?
exports of excess meat (and lots of other products) are shipped from europe to africa, sold below their production cost, and ruin their local economy. Their coasts are empty of fish because of big foreign trailers. Can that be prevented when markets are completely free, or would it get worse?

I hope to get some insights that make me challenge my own views without having to give up on my romantic hippie ideals.

politics

9 years ago by pharesim (74)

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steemrollin (69) · 9 years ago

Free markets would be much better for society and is an ideal to strive for, but it won't solve all our problems. A freer market would just minimize problems, but bad actors and violence would still exist and conflict would still need to be resolved. In the end it's just a matter of what people think is the best way to resolve them. Humans are fallible and there will always be problems. This may also be another reason why truly free markets may be hard to achieve.

It's difficult to assess what an individual's beliefs are either today or in the past with just labels. It could be argued that the younger generation's current beliefs about anarchism are different from what Kropotkin, Proudhoun, Nestor etc actually believed. It could also be argued that Proudhon/ Kroptokin/Nestor could be considered 'libertarian' and believed in voluntary free markets at the local & micro levels. Whatever the case may be, it would be good to read their writings directly. It would also be good to compare each anarchists stated beliefs about Marxism and compare them to what a modern day 'left' anarchist would say. What did Kropotkin/Proudhoun/Nestor believe about Marxism? How does that compare with a modern day 'left' anarchist?

In any case, labels and definitions make it difficult to compare. I would consider Lao Tzu/Lysander Spooner/Benjamin Tucker/Henry David Thoreau anarchists.. and would even consider Thomas Paine & Patrick Henry and the anti-Federalists more anarchist... they can also all be considered libertarian. If you look at Wiki Kropotkin was influenced by Proudhon, economist John Stuart Mill and Godwin who was influenced by the early Edmund Burke (the father of modern day conservatism/limited government/classical liberalism/libertarianism and just a few degrees away from ..yes anarchism.... so much for labels!). Anarchism is just the logical extension of the ideas of limited government, that is the absence of government.

So where does regulation and the solutions to the problems you listed come from? If you say government, what do you think all those 'anarchists' mentioned above believe about regulation and the problems you listed?

If you say 'regulation' or a solution can come from outside of government then I think it would be closer to what 'libertarians' and the 'anarchists' you mentioned think. Anyways good questions.. good luck on your search for your answers.

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heekaddict (47) · 9 years ago

freedom is survival of the fittest which unfortunately means death to the weakest

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steemrollin (69) · 9 years ago

Just a few questions to ponder:

Is freedom and compassion mutually exclusive?
Can government exist without force or violence?
Do we live in a world of abundance or scarcity?
Can freedom empower the weak? Can empowerment lead to sustenance?

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nikolai (60) · 9 years ago

Some of these are easier than other:

I have no idea how a free market could control nuclear materials to the same extent the law has
Why is this bad? If someone chooses to pay for the cleaned water instead of cleaning it themselves... it's probably more expensive for them to clean it themselves!
Animal welfare and ecological welfare is tough. Working conditions are a simple matter of improving coordination mechanisms for collective bargaining.
Does being a human entitle you to enslave the brightest minds in the world and force them to be educators instead of researchers? It's a spectrum. I bet in a different thread you'd argue expensive educations are not necessary because the internet has infinite learning resources.
The basic argument against minimum wage is that it discriminates against unskilled labor. If you're going to introduce deadweight loss to be able to support the least productive, use universal basic income instead - more straightforward and we don't force people to work just so they "earn" money they didn't actually earn.
Just to be clear, you're suggesting that either a) the food should be thrown away, or b) that it should be sold at an artificially high price? One interest group sees their income source destroyed, another sees cheaper fish to feed their family.

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pharesim (74) · 9 years ago (edited)

Thanks so far.

I was referring to perfectly clean drinking water. There are cases where Nestle did that in Africa. Of course governments are involved, as they got a concession for that. I think the question would more generally be: what happens to resources noone claimed yet?
& 5. bargaining does only work in skilled positions. For unqualified jobs there will always be someone doing it for less. Universal basic income is a great idea imo, but seemed incompatible with free markets to me so far. Maybe I am wrong there, and a free market society could still agree on some form of redistribution.
No, educators need to like their job and get paid of course. But I think society has to take care of that, because it profits as a whole. The internet can provide a lot of knowledge, but no formal education. While you can of course be lucky and climb up the social ladder without, most good paying jobs still require it.
The governments there should put customs on foreign products that compete with their local production. And it should not be ok to fish their coasts empty, only because they did not manage to do so themselves.
The west has so much power, economical and technological, and there is no chance for developing countries to get on their own feet when they have to compete with our unsustainable mass production.

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dantheman (73) · 9 years ago

I think your question is phrased wrong. The free market simply means "voluntary trade" and an "unfree market" means forbidden trade or forced trade. A criminal impedes the free market just as much as government does. In fact government is nothing more than organized crime that the free market has not yet found a way to stop.

The question you are looking for is whether or not some people must take it upon themselves to harm innocent people for the benefit of others. Does the end justify the means? Is it ok to kill one person so another might live? Is it ok to kill one person so that 20 might live? Does anyone have the right to choose who lives and who dies? Does a group have the right to act in ways a member of the group is not?

The Free market doesn't solve all of our problems, it just the logical result of adopting a consistent moral framework.

There are so many assumptions in your post that must first be challenged:

does the nuclear power plant operate carry insurance, participate in a mutual aid society, or do business with others? Are others able and willing to shun the operator and those who do business with him?
the free market is nothing more than establishing property rights and trading it. This example assumes water can be collectively owned and that thegovernment sold the rights. The free market wouldn't ever allow the ambiguity to exist.
people obviously care about their own well being, buying the cheap stuff conserves resources to be put to use in a more productive manner. This argument is a case for "charity" over "growth", ultimately more people benefit from growing economy made possible by high productivity. Over paying because of "conscience" is just malinvestment and ultimately shrinks the pie and makes everyone poorer.
people are only entitled to the value they can produce, no one is entitled to enslave a teacher. Someone born to a poor family is able to learn everything they need to succeed for free. Learning is done by the student, not pushed from the teacher. All you need is time and motivation.
companies compete against each other for labor, anyone who actually runs a company knows that employees are subject to supply and demand just like jobs are. This is just another way of stating #3.
this is just another way of stating 5 and 3. In this case what is being sold is surplus meet rather than surplus labor.

In effect most of your arguments boil down to a personal disagreement with the free market established prices. In some cases the distortion in prices is being caused by the governments and going to a free market would help, in other cases adding government to 'fix' the problem would create many other problems which you have failed to account for. It all amounts to price fixing which causes shortages and gluts in the market. This in turn results in economic inefficiency and makes everyone poorer.

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pharesim (74) · 9 years ago (edited)

I read through a lot of Wikipedia articles tonight, and basically found what I was searching for:

Rothbard says,

It is not enough to call simply for defense of "the rights of private property"; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be "private" must now be defended by libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.[26]

Rothbard says in "Justice and Property Right" that "any identifiable owner (the original victim of theft or his heir) must be accorded his property." In the case of slavery, Rothbard says that in many cases "the old plantations and the heirs and descendants of the former slaves can be identified, and the reparations can become highly specific indeed." He believes slaves rightfully own any land they were forced to work on under the "homestead principle".

He also justifies violence in taking it from the current owners.

So: free markets yes, but not based on what we have right now. And that's something we can definitely agree on. The details of how long someone can claim ownership after abandoning the property, how to handle collective work and where it starts and ends, and what those that can't and/or don't want to work should be getting to be able to live without being driven into crime are minor issues compared to "how do we get out of the shit we're in". And none of us has a solution. Violence has proven to not be an option since the theories were crafted.
I also feel like a lot of self-claimed anarcho-capitalists/libertarians don't know a lot about the theories they claim to support, and mainly want to be left alone by everyone while trying to reach the top of the food chain.

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pharesim (74) · 9 years ago (edited)

Thanks for that. Well thought out arguments, and in the first few moments I felt like I would agree partially. Just wanted to address some of your assumptions, and nearly ended up with a godwin. I must have understood some things really wrong.

Okay, that's what I expected. They either take care of it themselves (what they don't), or may get punished after the shit is in the drain. Not very different from today, but a functional government following its duties to the people would care.
Water was one out of so many examples. All the unsustainable copper, coal and whatever else mining, the rainforests which are still disappearing, would it be prevented because the land doesn't belong to anyone, or to individuals? What's the legitimation to own rainforests as an individual if so? Planting a flag, building a fence? How do we fix the fact that nearly all big (land-)owners got their property through theft? Wasn't all of America stolen from the indigenous population, or did they forget to raise their flag?
Each growth comes to an end. Respecting the living circumstances of other living creatures may be seen as charity, treating nature and resources sustainable is the only way to keep our society at least near the current state for the next generations. To deny that, you have to ignore a lot of scientific research in all fields, while concentrating a certain economic model.
I'd call that economical-darwinistic. You ignore that the base for all education is laid at a very low age. We both may have been lucky, and our parents gave us the tools to educate ourselves. Most people didn't get those and learn a lot better with instructions. Others don't even have parents. Or can't hear or see.
There's a lot more demand than supply for jobs. And the future won't change that. Efficiency of production is going to increase, and less and less workforce will be required.
Yeah. Companies compete. Billion dollar companies with efficiency over everything, against small local farmers who know the names of their lifestock. There's no other job for them, no way to get out of their place and start another life. Well, there's the darwinism again...

This makes me sad.

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pharesim (74) · 9 years ago

I just had to think about this glorious piece, and the sadness is gone :D

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