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October 16, 2008
Capitalism Is Moral; Communism Is Not. Period.
Don Boudreaux
Posted by Don Boudreaux in Myths and Fallacies | Permalink
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Like "Socialism", the word "Capitalism" describes particular historical realities, not some never-realized ideal that David Boaz imagines. I certainly agree that we've seen no "unregulated capitalism" lately, largely because "unregulated capitalism" is a contradiction in terms; however, the regulatory regimes we've called "capitalist" lately are nonetheless what the word means.
So I'll call myself a "mutualist" for the time being, and if statesmen ever fly a "mutualist" banner over their tragically inept organizational regimes, I'll adopt another label. Meanwhile, the apologists for "capitalism" may go down with their ship.
Posted by: Martin Brock | Oct 16, 2008 2:52:24 PM
Martin - either you believe in force or you don't. I believe in mutual cooperation.
Posted by: Crusader | Oct 16, 2008 3:01:05 PM
Martin, apparently you didn't read Boaz's article in its entirety. If you did you'd know it is not about Boaz's fantasy of 'unregulated markets'.
It is a comparison between what communism achieved and what the last 30-years of 'unregulated markets' achieved.
Posted by: Marcus | Oct 16, 2008 3:18:18 PM
Head him off at the pass; "but those regimes didn't have democracy".
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 16, 2008 4:01:59 PM
Martin, true capitalists don't complain when their ship sinks because of their own failings. Their complaint is when government, out of a fallacial concept of "equality," makes a successful capitalist's ship sink to "share" in the losses of the unsuccessful.
In a true free market, a capitalist and his investors reap both his successes and rewards -- alone, as is their right. Others not involved have no claim to any share of the successes, and likewise they have no no share in any liabilities or losses.
But in socialism, if one person sinks, everyone else is made to experience losses. Diluted, but still some. It won't matter if I personally was never involved; I'm still made to suffer. Oh, maybe I'll benefit here and there, but if I thought it was a good idea, wouldn't I have gotten involved in the first place?
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus | Oct 16, 2008 4:39:34 PM
Nice move, Sam Grove. Brilliant tactic.
Posted by: scott clark | Oct 16, 2008 4:59:22 PM
We live in a modern corporatist world - an unholy marriage between corporate interests and state power. Much of the criticism I hear about commercial society from my students and colleagues outside of economics is actually a criticism of that system - but those criticisms are popularly portrayed as problems with "capitalism."
This is one reason I use the term "commercial society" in place of the term "capitalism" as it is used here and elsewhere. My feeling is that the word "corporatism" needs to be popularized and demystified, just as communism has been
Posted by: wintercow20 | Oct 16, 2008 5:06:19 PM
Karl Marx coined the term 'captialism'. What he described was an abhorrent and self-destructive economic system. Fortunately, capitalism never has and never will exist anywhere.
It is a mystery to me why liberals adopt the term 'capitalism' when describing the ideals of the free market. Appropriating the mantle of capitalism invites unwelcome connotations of oppression and exploitation, and does the reputation of liberty no favours.
Posted by: Lee Kelly | Oct 16, 2008 6:48:20 PM
I believe in mutual cooperation.
Posted by: Crusader
Yeah but the unregulated Wall Street "traitors" don't believe in that... so what's an unregulated capitilst to do?
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 16, 2008 7:06:47 PM
I don't think that Meyerson claimed that they were morally equivalent. That was Boaz closing line straw-man. Meyerson claims they both failed. And he was specific to claim unregulated capitalism failed not capitalism in general.
On a poorly factual basis Communism has not failed to the degree of unregulated capitalism.
The communist ideologue might point to any number of "thriving" communist regimes that still exist. One happens to be our chief trading partner who stocks our "capitalistic" WalMart (China-marts) stores shelves. There was slavery under capitalism and capitalism under communism. Both have potential moral pitfalls.
The most damming thing for the free market unregulated capitalist ideologue... the thing that really points to its failure is the thing it's supporters themselves point to in its defense. "This failure was not a failure of unregulated markets", they loudly boast. To which I reply... Exactly... because no such thing exists.
A competitive capitalistic market will always require regulation. All our differences are in degrees of regulation with the best evidence showing that as we creep toward that Fairytale Land of Unregulated Libertopia things tend to crash and crash big. And in that way what the libertarian believes has failed and failed in a big way.
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 16, 2008 7:52:04 PM
"Yeah but the unregulated Wall Street "traitors" don't believe in that..."
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 16, 2008 7:06:47 PM
Muirgeo, this is nothing more or less than a cynical assumption on your part. I would, furthermore, suggest that it is utter nonesense. They didn't take, by force, anything from anyone. Only two entities can do so: a)the common theif, and b) the government through taxes.
On topic, I would say that I've never like the word "capitalism". It has become an emotionally charged pejorative. I prefer the term "free-market".
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 7:56:39 PM
"The most damming thing for the free market unregulated capitalist ideologue... the thing that really points to its failure is the thing it's supporters themselves point to in its defense. "This failure was not a failure of unregulated markets", they loudly boast. To which I reply... Exactly... because no such thing exists."
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 16, 2008 7:52:04 PM
So the failure of the free-market is that it doesn't exist?
Do you realize how little sense this paragraph makes?
Using your model we can point to all kinds of failures. Here are some of the more absured ones that I can think of off hand:
1. Square-circles fail, because square-circles don't exist.
2. The failure of the hot iced-tea is that it doesn't exist.
3. The failure of meat-eating veggitarians, is that they don't exist.
Somehow, you've managed to use a lot of words and not say anything.
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 8:15:50 PM
Dr. George Strawman Balella is back. Keep at it dude. Do not relent. We need your buffoonery here.
Posted by: Oil Shock | Oct 16, 2008 8:16:02 PM
MnM,
"Capitalism" was meant as a pejorative, as Lee Kelly points out.
Best,
Wall Street Traitor
Posted by: Methinks | Oct 16, 2008 8:18:41 PM
So the failure of the free-market is that it doesn't exist?
No. Village Idiot already told you that the it's because they didn't build a dam. Thus, they require some "damming" evidence.
Somehow, you've managed to use a lot of words and not say anything.
Ah yes, the mark of the idiot.
Sincerely,
Wall Street Traitor, laser focused on stealing homes from hard working American subprime borrowers via derivative pyramid schemes.
This is getting boring.
Posted by: Methinks | Oct 16, 2008 8:23:00 PM
All our differences are in degrees of regulation with the best evidence showing that as we creep toward that Fairytale Land of Unregulated Libertopia things tend to crash and crash big.
There is often a big difference between newspaper headlines and the contents of the articles.
Please explain where you have seen any creeping toward "Fairytale Land of Unregulated Libertopia".
How is it determined that such is actually occurring?
What level of regulatory activity must exist below which you would say "unregulated"?
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 16, 2008 8:27:21 PM
Sam,
Perhaps we should simply start by asking him to produce some evidence that libertarians believe that if only their ideas were put into practice the world would be a perfect place.
P.S. My apologies to Lee Kelly. Somehow I missed your post. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have duplicated it.
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 8:40:48 PM
Only Marx knew exactly what he saw, but he did propose that 'capitalism' would fall victim to its own success at producing the goods.
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 16, 2008 8:47:15 PM
One thing that muirgeo has failed to consider in his childlike superficial exploration of economics is the mechanism by which free markets regulate.
In a free market, people take actions that they predict will improve their lot, typically exchanging goods and services with each other. In an exchange, both parties expect to benefit. The vast majority of the time, this is actually true: for example a couple of thousand people might shop at a supermarket on a given day, and every one of them walks out pleased that they purchased food for consumption using inedible cash, while the owner of the supermarket is satisfied to sell the food for the cash he so desires.
So, when is regulation really appropriate? Well, according to muirgeo, it would be to prevent transactions where one of the participants is making a mistake, where his or her prediction of benefit is flat out wrong. If the transaction goes ahead, at some point the actor will be disappointed by the outcome. Now, in the case of the current crisis, the people who predicted incorrectly are largely people who purchased mo0rtgage backed securities and people who purchased stocks in companies issuing the mortgage backed securities. Both groups suffered a substantial loss as investments that looked like sure things turned out to be anything but.
The regulatory aspect of a free market comes in with people's reaction to these failures. People who have been burned by a bad investment, or watched other people burned by a bad investment learn from the mistake. They try to figure out warning signs that should have told them that the proposed deal was a bad one at the outset. They try to come up with models that will tell them what works and what does not work. Then, they apply these lessons learned to future transactions.
This is, of course, the same method government officials use to come up with regulatory laws. however, where an investor has the option in a free market of crafting his own criteria, deciding when he can risk his own money and when he can't, under governemnt regulation, investors are denied such flexibility. If the regulators use the wrong models, or come up with bad rules, the investor has no choice but to comply (unless he wants to go to prison).
The above explanation also ignores the all to likely possibility that the regulators will be influenced not to protect people who were burned but to protect the people benefiting from the unwise investments.
This is the thing muirgeo is missing:
1) The current crisis is exactly how free markets dispassionately eliminate idiotic business practices.
2) People learn form the mistakes and attempt to avoid similar unwise investments in the future.
3) At best, government regulations will encode a subset of the lessons that people have figured out, and quite probably suboptimal ones.
4) Bad regulations can trap people in untenable circumstances that they otherwise would avoid.
muirgeo thinks the free market failed. It did not, it blew the whistle on the bad practices while politicians, regulators, and the private actors benefiting from the scheme were behaving as if nothing were wrong. In the absence of the inexorable action of market forces, the bad mortgages would still be in the process of being issued, and people would still be investing unwisely in them, and the owners of these dodgy financial offices would still be enriching themselves.
Posted by: tarran | Oct 16, 2008 9:35:27 PM
Communism is so deeply immoral, it's difficult to know where to begin.
To generalize: Communism demands that everyone get the same thing. People are different with different desires and different needs. For everyone to be satisfied with the same thing everyone must also want the same thing. This does not happen in nature. It fails in theory.
As soon as the Bolsheviks wrested power, Lenin implemented true Marxian communism. Communism, as Marx outlined it, included neither money nor prices. Everyone voted for a group of leaders. The leaders decided how much of everything was required. The populations produced everything in the prescribed amounts. Everything was to be kept in a big warehouse and the citizens were to take from this warehouse what they needed when the needed it. No money and no prices required. So, Lenin eliminated prices and money. Without prices and money, all trade came to a grinding halt. The peasants couldn't get tools to farm from the factories in the cities and the cities began to starve. Workers and peasants went on strike. In short, the entire economy came to a grinding halt within days and within a couple of weeks the everyone in the whole country stopped working and went on strike. Lenin switched his focus from implementing Marxian Communism to holding on to power at all costs and conscripted labour without pay. So, within weeks, slavery was a feature of Communism. The economic system failed before it ever got to Gulags, the starvation of the Ukraine, mass executions and the rest of the gore.
Communism's biggest failure, both in theory and in practice, is that robbing individuals of their right to self determination. While the rhetoric is filled with "the will of the people" it actually treats all people as interchangeable. Nobody is an individual and nobody is worth anything - making it easier for Stalin to throw unarmed civilians at Hitler's advancing army. Communism requires an allegiance to the collective of relative strangers which is no less binding than the natural bond one has to one's family. You are required by the state to feel no more obligation to the child you brought into the world or the spouse to whom you have committed to build a life than you are to the state and all of its inhabitants. The impact of this brainwashing on Russian families is incalculable. Parents were encouraged to neglect their children in favour of the state, promiscuity became much more pronounced (one person is just like the next, no?), family ties became strained and alcoholism and drug abuse skyrocketed as families were stuffed into single tiny rooms of communal apartments and lost all control over their lives. Nobody could move without permission and people turned in their neibhbours and even family members to the NKVD (which had a shoot first, ask questions later policy) in exchange for a slightly larger room in a slightly larger communal apartment. The only thing that thrived was the black market.
It's clear that Meyerson doesn't know the difference between a free market and a hole in the ground. And he doesn't understand the difference between the utopian promises of Communism and the lack of any promises - bar freedom - in Capitalism. He attributes the financial disasters to laissez-faire policies over the past three decades because the rhetoric was free market. The practice was anything but. Regulation has increased dramatically over that time period. Financial markets are extremely tightly regulated and every year brings more regulation (where else can you be hauled into court for passing along a rumour?) and every single product blamed for the collapse of the financial system was either developed to circumvent regulation (securitization & CDS, for example) or was mandated by the central planners in government (CRA, Fan & Fred guarantees, redlining). Because of strict regulations, who can own banks is restricted (private equity groups, for example, can't), cutting off many avenues for recapitalization were and leaving government virtually the only entity to which banks could turn. As one letter in to the Wall Street Journal put it recently, it's like government breaking your leg, giving you a crutch and claiming you wouldn't be able to walk at all if it weren't for government. What Meyerson is really seeing is a socialist policies and central planning in America - just on a smaller scale than the Soviet Union. I guess his remedy is "hair of the dog".
Posted by: Methinks | Oct 16, 2008 9:43:56 PM
Capitalism Is Moral
There's nothing morally correct about melamine in food and quality control that ensures junk is the only thing from a converted third world country.
Posted by: sethstorm | Oct 16, 2008 9:48:40 PM
Well said, Methinks, my lovely Wall Street Traitor (hehe). Though I think Marx made more fundemental error than those you've already pointed out. So fundemental, that I suspect that it was the very reason he wrote Das Kapital in the first place: man's desire to succeed; to achieve.
How someone who so base an error could become so highly influential frightens me.
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 9:51:06 PM
who made so base an error
Jeez, I need to proof read. I'll never learn.
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 9:52:50 PM
Muirgeo, like the communists, believes in coercion and use-of-force in the hand of corrupt and lying politicians. That's his ideal, what he pines for, his great hope.
I think I'm going to write in Mike Munger for president
Posted by: Unit | Oct 16, 2008 9:59:35 PM
Yes! We all purchase junk that we do not want or need from third-world countries.
No, better yet, major retailers purchase this junk and chemically altered food in bulk and when the demand ISN"T there for these so-called goods, the major retailers just suck up the losses. This cycle repeats during every purchase order. These businesses just cannot foolishly spend money on junk fast enough so that it can sit in their ever increasing inventory bins without getting ought up. It all makes perfect sense now.
Posted by: LowcountryJoe | Oct 16, 2008 10:04:40 PM
Gee LCJ, do I detect a hint of sarcasm? Just a hint, mind you.
Posted by: MnM | Oct 16, 2008 10:14:48 PM
There's nothing morally correct about melamine in food and quality control that ensures junk is the only thing from a converted third world country.
And there's nobody holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy the product of said country. In capitalism, there are many producers and you can choose to pay more to buy from another. In socialism/communism you'll have your choice of one producer and if he poisons you...oh well. There's millions more just like you.
Posted by: Methinks | Oct 16, 2008 10:17:01 PM
People shop at Walmart because of the prices.
People are very concerned about prices because the empire, entitlements, etc., consume large quantities of resources which necessitate high taxes and/or monetization of the public debt.
Taking money (fruit of their labor) from people dis-empowers them.
This will always be the result of collective management of resources.
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 16, 2008 11:47:44 PM
Ayn Rand's We the Living is a striking account of life in the USSR after the revolution.
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 16, 2008 11:49:16 PM
And there's nobody holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy the product of said country. In capitalism, there are many producers and you can choose to pay more to buy from another. In socialism/communism you'll have your choice of one producer and if he poisons you...oh well. There's millions more just like you.
-- Posted by: Methinks | Oct 16, 2008 10:17:01 PM
Methinks, you don't understand. Sethstorm cannot be expected to think for himself. But he CAN be expected to think for you and everyone else.
That's the difference between the market and democracy.
Posted by: Marcus | Oct 17, 2008 12:30:44 AM
Vendors took advantage of the lack of oversight
See, I'm not feeling good about government spending and regulation getting better. Via the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603936.html?hpid=moreheadlineslocal
"As District officials continue to review what went wrong with a jobs program that overspent its budget by $30 million, a Washington Post examination has found that the city's willingness to pay private organizations thousands of dollars in fees for each student contributed to the overspending.
Overwhelmed by 20,000 job-seekers, the D.C. Department of Employment Services agreed, sometimes frantically, to pay 35 vendors to work with them. City officials ignored a cost limit imposed in past years and failed to monitor how the money was spent, according to The Post's review.
Vendors took advantage of the lack of oversight; some charged more than their contracts allowed and others made changes to their service agreements. "
Read it, I suppose. Small change, you say. More like an example of why these programs go wrong.
Posted by: Don the libertarian Democrat | Oct 17, 2008 12:44:24 AM
So the failure of the free-market is that it doesn't exist?
Do you realize how little sense this paragraph makes?
Posted by: MnM
Do you know how simple it is for me to ask you for an example of a free-market? And once you are unable to provide an answer do you know how simple it is for me to ask just on what the hell you come to the conclusion that they are so effective. You sir, have a religion on your hands... indeed gods are very hard to kill but yours IS dead... still born in fact.
What I said makes perfect sense. The problem for you is it leaves you no rebuttal and no logical way out.
Do free-markets exist yes or no?
If yes and you point to one I'll show you where it failed.. If no they don't exist then you've reduced your ideology to faith.... a belief unsubstantiated in the real world.
What does exist are regulated markets. Some better regulated then others. You guys are wanting to play the soccer game with no rules and no referees. I'm not the ridiculous one. I'm, the one based in reality and pragmatism.
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 17, 2008 1:22:31 AM
Please explain where you have seen any creeping toward "Fairytale Land of Unregulated Libertopia".
Posted by: Sam Grove
Here is how you tell Sam. First you start with an open mind. I'll wait..... let me know when you are ready................................................ready?... not yet.......keep working... maybe a little oil behind the left frontal lobe...OK that's kind of creaky but at least we have a foot in the door... don't let it shut.
Then you look to a time when there where no credit default swaps or securitized mortgages. It existed and their was no credit crisis. Then the rules changed. Some gradually some quite abruptly. Then all of a sudden CDS and Mortgage backed securities with complex financial products come on the scene when they were illegal before.
Before these rules changed there were not pyramids of credit over $100 trillion dollars in "value" and there were no crashing markets. After the rules changed there were huge masses of credit and now we have collapsing markets.
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 17, 2008 1:39:17 AM
You guys are wanting to play the soccer game with no rules and no referees
And you believe in straw men. You do keep attacking them.
A free market? Vidohs has cited American Indian tribes...of course they didn't have the benefit of current technology, but who did?
The Amish operate pretty independently...except when the government insists on otherwise.
The settlers of the American territories in the west often made their way sans Federal, state, or country governments.
Certainly there were no regulatory agencies in the so-called 'Wild West'.
And don't go citing cinema history of the west as evidence of anything...though I expect you will anyhow. I'll post references on this if you want them.
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 17, 2008 1:39:35 AM
BTW, a call for free markets is not a call for no government, as you seem to always assume.
Posted by: Sam Grove | Oct 17, 2008 1:45:48 AM
Back in the 20s, Government was 3% of the GDP (BTW, Not a big fan of GDP ). Total Federal revenues back then was about 3 billion. Dollar has lost somewhere between 95-99% of it's value since then. So that means to have a similar sized government today would take somewhere btween 60 billion and 300 billion federal budget. LOL. Yes, we had unfettered free markets for the last 30 years. ROTFL. Even under fascist Roosevelt, the federal government was only 10% of the stinking GDP.
Keynesians who had advised the Hoover, Roosevelt & subsequent administrations, turned that 30s downturn into a depression. More recently, they did the same to Japan.
Haven't all the Keynesian improvements made the world a perfect place?
Posted by: Oil Shock | Oct 17, 2008 1:54:54 AM
Bill Bonner writes....
I, Alan Aurifericus Nefarious Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, holder of the Medal of Freedom, Knight of the British Empire, member of the French Legion of Honor, known to my peers as the "greatest central banker who ever lived," (I will not trouble you with all my titles. I will not mention, for example, that I was the winner of the prestigious Enron Prize for distinguished public service, awarded on November 1, 2001, just days after Enron began to collapse in a heap of corruption charges) am about to give you the strange history of my later years.For I will dispense with childhood…even with young adulthood, and those dreary sessions with that terminally dreary woman, Ayn Rand, who couldn't write a compelling sentence if her life depended on it. I'll also dispense with my own dreary years at the Council of Economic Advisors, and pass directly to the time I spent as the most powerful man in the world. For here are my real titles: Emperor of the world's most powerful money, despot of the world's largest and most dynamic economy, and architect of the most audacious financial system this sorry globe has ever seen.
Yes, I, Alan Greenspan, ruled the financial world. But who ruled Alan Greenspan? Ah…I will come to that, and tell you how, while presiding over the biggest boom ever I became caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.
....
Posted by: Oil Shock | Oct 17, 2008 2:18:04 AM
Here is a far better explanation of the role that derivatives and hedge funds played in the recent sub-prime housing crisis and the market collapse. It's clear that unregulated markets not poor people trying to get houses were far more to blame for the problem.
Posted by: muirgeo | Oct 17, 2008 2:18:49 AM
Posted by: Oil Shock | Oct 17, 2008 2:19:55 AM
Honestly, a report from the IMF to prove a point? How many economies has that dung heap of IMF Keynesian economists wrecked now? The hits just keep on coming.
Posted by: maximus | Oct 17, 2008 2:58:36 AM
"So fundemental, that I suspect that it was the very reason he wrote Das Kapital in the first place: man's desire to succeed; to achieve." - MnM
Good point. Years ago when I was being a smart guy in college I took a class in Marxism, (actually two, the second one was called Alternative Economic Systems or some such crap, but it was basically Marxism II). The professor who was a well-known American communist, (he was Eldridge Cleaver's running mate for President in 1968), said the biggest error Marx made was his failure to forsee the rise and expansion of the middle class in capitalist societies. In his opinion, that process nullified Marx's claim (I believe Marx just rewrote the idea from Ricardo, but I'm going from memory here),that wages would be "pushed down" to subsistance level or lower. Therefore, the workers revolution that Marx predicted never occurred on a global basis.
Posted by: maximus | Oct 17, 2008 3:19:20 AM
It's pointless writing huge essays to muirduck on the virtues of free markets, he's already made up his mind about the straw-man of capitalism and that's that. At this point it's important to recognize that people like muriduck are the sworn enemies of freedom and we must fight them.
Posted by: Crusader | Oct 17, 2008 3:30:45 AM
maximus - even Russia needed a perfect storm of:
* a horribly failed war against Germany resulting in millions dead
* starvation
to allow the Bolshevik revolution to happen. Even then another civil war ensued that killed about 10 million people from 1918-1922.
That is the kind of horrific destruction it takes to bring a communist state into existence. I can't believe the American people would willingly vote in Communism. They are being hoodwinked into voting for Obama, as the MSM will not display his true colors.
Posted by: Crusader | Oct 17, 2008 3:40:34 AM
It's clear that unregulated markets not poor people trying to get houses were far more to blame for the problem.
We've been blaming this on poor people? Really?
Posted by: Hans Luftner | Oct 17, 2008 3:46:52 AM
George, you've often claimed that this alleged crisis, as well as prior crises, was caused by the free market, which you simultaneously assert does not & could not exist. This appears as a contradiction to us. Perhaps you could try explaining it differently, since you've utterly failed to explain it so far.
I suspect you cannot, which is why your reply to our requests for clarification is not clarification, but rather, once again, this total side-step:
Do free-markets exist yes or no?
Not that it'll make any difference, but I'll answer you: Yes. Every time I peacefully trade with another willing party, without outside interference, that is a free-market transaction. If someone down the street engages in a non-free-market transaction, it does not negate the free-market nature of my transaction. I've explained this to you before. I'll doubtlessly explain it to you again.
The existence of an abusive husband does not prove that happy, loving, respectful marriages do not exist. Likewise, the existence of regulation somewhere does not prove that a free-market does not exist.
The problem you have may come from assuming that there is "A Market", be it the United States Economy or whatever, but in fact there are many markets, each one an aggregate of individual transactions.
You don't understand what that means. I believe that you quite literally do not know what a market is. You don't know what the word means. Please, George, at least so I know we're speaking the same language, tell me what you believe the word "market" means. Otherwise we'll just talk past each other, which is what we've been doing.
I don't know why I keep clinging to these hopes that we can communicate with each other. I guess I'm an optimist.
Posted by: Hans Luftner | Oct 17, 2008 3:59:18 AM
Hans - notice how muirduck will ignore everything you just said and will repeat his strawman. He's basically insulted every single person on this website. Well I refuse to be insulted to my face and continue talking to the person who did it. If you have so little self respect that you continue in that, good luck with that.
Posted by: Crusader | Oct 17, 2008 4:02:31 AM
Question to anyone - has muirduck EVER acknowledged someone else's logical reasoning? I'll be waiting. He's a TROLL and must be banned. If the blog owners refuse to ban the troll, at least ignore it.
Posted by: Crusader | Oct 17, 2008 4:06:32 AM
Well I refuse to be insulted to my face and continue talking to the person who did it. If you have so little self respect that you continue in that, good luck with that.
I'm giving him another chance. When you assert that I do so out of a lack of self respect, you insult me to my face. I'll keep talking to you, though. We're different that way.
Posted by: Hans Luftner | Oct 17, 2008 4:17:38 AM
Martin, apparently you didn't read Boaz's article in its entirety. If you did you'd know it is not about Boaz's fantasy of 'unregulated markets'.
Boaz writes, "Where to begin? Certainly we haven’t had any unregulated capitalism lately."
And though he doesn't make the point here, he'd surely assert that "unregulately capitalism" didn't create the depression of the thirties either. Basically, "unregulated capitalism" is like the "socialism" that socialists always tell me has never been tried.
It is a comparison between what communism achieved and what the last 30-years of 'unregulated markets' achieved.
No. It's a comparison between what various communisms achieved and what regulated markets achieved.
Boaz writes, "And what is the 'failure,' as Meyerson puts it, of this semi-deregulated capitalism?" Of course, "semi-deregulated" is just an awkward way of saying "regulated".
Posted by: Martin Brock | Oct 17, 2008 4:48:21 AM
Martin, true capitalists don't complain when their ship sinks because of their own failings.
There are no "true capitalists". There are only real capitalists.
Their complaint is when government, out of a fallacial concept of "equality," makes a successful capitalist's ship sink to "share" in the losses of the unsuccessful.
In reality, "equality" has little to do with the aims of government, and government typically floats the capitalist's sinking ship. You may narrow you admiration to the "successful capitalist", but you only know the "successful capitalist" in retrospect, and you may only assume in retrospect that the "successful capitalist" is your chimerical "true capitalist" who doesn't complain when he isn't successful.
Posted by: Martin Brock | Oct 17, 2008 4:49:57 AM
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