Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
(Post 2181465)
You distort it, and I think you know it. Yoiur criticism of the price manipoulation for sugar coffee etc is not done by people wanting a free market (=captialists), but is done by people wanting monopolies. And monopolism and capitalism are antagonistic, no matter whether you consider free market versus states, or free market versus lobbyists.
Its indeed is strange that such distortions are attacked not as monopolism but as as "capitalism", when they appear in an economical context where secret cartel building (which also is a violation of the idea of free markets) takes place. But when monopolies are built in the name of socialist stuff or giovenrment rtegulation (which in the end is one and the same), then the same distortion is welcomed and defended as a achievment although it is at the cost of eroding the basis of everybody's wealth.
Strange that is becasue a true caspitlaist - knows the value of solid, healthy money, and the need for a free market as a precondition. States and socialists do not know that. Monopolists in the end are eneimies of freedom and free markets. And the state is the biggest monopolist of all, having the monopole to plunder and to legitimnate itself, and having the monopole to make laws and rules that regulate all others while the state has the freedom to exclude itself from these rules.
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I think the tendency to corruption, nepotism and the yearning for oligopoles/monopoles are inherently in this economic system- especially with a system which depends on constant growth, like the current one. The people who really want a free market, with transparency and choices are the buyers, not the sellers.
The 'real capitalist' argument sounds an awful lot like the 'true Scotsman' one. Let's see what the gramps of the invisible hand analogy has to say about this:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." (Adam Smith) :know:
The beer price fixes are actually a pretty good example for my theory. The German beer market is huge, with many participamnts; millions of consumers, a huge amount of producers, about 1200 breweries in Germany alone. The market is open to foreign producers and consumers (hello Danes :)) with only some restrictions regarding reginal products. It's one of the most open markets we have, with little taxation on the product relatively to other countries. However we saw a conglomeration during the past few years, like in most other economic branches. And exactly those companies, which accumulated many breweries, resulting in a huge market share, did those price fixing agreements. So, I don't think they are not true capis, those guys did make it to the top of huge corporations; they just follow the internal logic of this system.
Oh, and here's a good read about free markets:
why the free markets concept is useless -Goog blog, I can pretty much agree with the author's stance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skybird
(Post 2181467)
At the same time, due to the Cantillon effect, real property and value gets constantly transferred from the bottom to the top of the communal hierarchy. Here is where Penguin and me maybe would meet and share the same opinion in our criticism (saying that by the image I have of him). In a nutshell, the Cantillon effect means that new printed money that gets injected into the system, gets injected at the top of the banking industry.
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I'm not really big in macroeconomics, but this sounds quite similar to Reagan's concept of trickle-down-economics, so yes, of course I criticize this :). That being said, money is not really my currency, it's just a tool for exchange. If I would sell my work for printed paper, sea shells or beer cans wouldn't matter, as long as I find others who agree on a value of those items.
