Posted on 01/24/2006 11:31:04 AM PST by Marxbites
The Free market is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services. Thus, when I buy a newspaper from a news dealer for fifty cents, the news dealer and I exchange two commodities: I give up fifty cents, and the news dealer gives up the newspaper. Or if I work for a corporation, I exchange my labor services, in a mutually agreed way, for a monetary salary; here the corporation is represented by a manager (an agent) with the authority to hire.
Both parties undertake the exchange because each expects to gain from it. Also, each will repeat the exchange next time (or refuse to) because his expectation has proved correct (or incorrect) in the recent past. Trade, or exchange, is engaged in precisely because both parties benefit; if they did not expect to gain, they would not agree to the exchange.
This simple reasoning refutes the argument against free trade typical of the "mercantilist" period of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Europe, and classically expounded by the famed sixteenth-century French essayist Montaigne. The mercantilists argued that in any trade, one party can benefit only at the expense of the other, that in every transaction there is a winner and a loser, an "exploiter" and an "exploited." We can immediately see the fallacy in this still-popular viewpoint: the willingness and even eagerness to trade means that both parties benefit. In modern game-theory jargon, trade is a win-win situation, a "positive-sum" rather than a "zero-sum" or "negative-sum" game............
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
A free market is 99 cents cheaper than the 99 cent store.
Not exactly. The "Federalist" Founders wanted a mercantilist economy. The "Anti-Federalist" Founders were the advocates of a free market.
I think you'll find that what we have now adheres to the specifications of the Federalists.
A market can be free only if it is fair and that means regulated.
Yes, only government, that great arbiter of equity, can make markets free and fair by regulating them. ROFL!!!
Watch it . . . that kind of thinking can get one labeled as a globalist, or socialist, or some such nonsense.
The market must be regulated, but if that must mean gov't regulation, then is to be expected to find scoffers. There is something else besides gov't, always has been.
The answer to the question posed in the title is "A myth."
Thanks - and no wonder America is so screwed up!
It's full of ignorant statists!!!
What garbage we get here.
Federalists schmederalists.
Freedom means we own our own bodies and whatever we produce, ergo property rights are natural rights.
The ONLY reason for Govt to exist is to protect our rights and to compel men to do what they voluntarily will not do, ergo the rule of law to protect our rights and contracts etc, and to have justice for those that harm others, PERIOD!!!
Free people voluntarily exchange goods and services IF they want to.
Only complete idiots think regulation is a positive or necessary thing.
Unintentionally hilarious. I'll wager that you are a veritable laugh riot at the grocery store.
Au contraire.
Even before coins existed men bartered freely if it was deemed by each to be beneficial.
Got yer degree at Sears did ya?
Next we'll hear that "fair trade" a la the unions, is free trade - when it's just unions protecting themselves from competition at our expenses. Like the tariffs/subsidies making sugar cost Americans twice as much as offshore. The very reason candy companies have relocated OUT of the US.
Back to econ 101 for the dunces.
Oh, so you (the non-dunce) believe we have "free trade." Tell me, oh econ guru, which market or markets are not affected by artificial restraints on trade imposed by regulation?
The black market, for starters.
Enjoy your stay in fantasyland.
Ok, try this one: I paint your garage in exchange for you mowing my lawn.
And you have to deal with various laws regarding the disposal of paint.
And, where I live, I am required by law to purchase specific yard waste bags to dispose of the clippings and such.
It is if the risk is created by breach or avoidance of the law or regulation.
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