Posted on 05/20/2010 11:29:06 AM PDT by EBH
Who's the fool? In a true free market, all factors of production that can be moved will be mobile. That includes, capital, entrepreneurship, AND LABOR. A so-called free market that allows the free movement of capital and technology and manufacturing processes, etc., but restricts the free movement of labor is not a free market, but a bastardized market rigged to the advantage of capital and management.
And true free markets raise the question of whether the free movement of labor should be allowed, or open borders for labor and not just goods and services. That's the debate that should exist, and if you're not for the free movement of labor, all the aspects of a so-called free market should be debated and reviewed as national policy questions.
But free markets do not currently exist internationally. So, we can't now be ending something that never existed.
There is an answer that will someday be realized: produce it where you plan to sell it, in large nations, or in regions made up of smaller nations. That can be done without pitting the nations with the highest living standards against nations with the lowest.
The free market (Laissez-faire Capitalism) did not cause this crisis, the government (CRONY Capitalism/Socialism/Communism) did.
The free market did not take us off the gold standard, the government did.
The free market did not dump trillions of dollars of cheap money into the system causing the largest asset bubble in history, the government did.
The free market did not create Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and Sallie Mae, the government did.
The free market did not pass laws that force banks to lend to those who do not qualify for a loan, the government did.
The free market did not create multiple MULTI-trillion-dollar unfunded entitlement programs, the government did.
The free market did not write a 60,000+ page tax code that punishes work, rewards sloth and buys the votes of special interest groups, the government did.
The free market did not destroy our public school system and graduate (or fail to graduate) generations of civically and financially illiterate citizens, the government did.
The free market did not drive our jobs overseas and kill our entrepreneurial spirit with over-taxation, over-regulation and frivolous lawsuits, the government did.
The free market did not ban drilling for oil, vilify coal and block the building of nuclear power plants in the United States, thereby transferring hundred of billions of dollars of American wealth and many thousands of energy-industry jobs to foreign countries, the government did.
This crisis is the result of a giant social engineering experiment and vote-buying scheme gone tragically wrong.
The free market does not try to engineer society or buy votes, the government does.
The government caused this crisis, the free market did not.
The government cannot fix the crisis, the free market can.
That's like talking about Marxist egalitarianism - a hypothetical that denies human nature itself. Countries exist with defined borders. Calling for free migration of labor lives in abject denial of how the vast majority of people in the world view their homeland. We can have fairly unfettered movement of goods and capital, but call for open borders and it strikes a nerve in our primal brains - and for good reason, just look at the problems our sieve of a southern border has caused around the country.
I agree 100%, except for the pointless talk of Marxism.
But a free market is an economic model or definition. If the US states could restrict the movement of labor into their states, would we have free market? A true free market includes the free movement of labor, and free markets have never existed internationally for that and other reasons.
What we have is a bastardized international market rigged to the advantage of capital and management, specifically multi-nationals who want access to the world's cheapest labor and most lax regulation, and also untariffed access back to the US market. That's a rigged market, not a free market.
Not to quibble, but we've been using Keynesian economics for more like the past 70 years.
It's just now all coming to a head with the Western world sliding into bankruptcy.
And free migration of labor would only make that worse, IMO. I know H1-B visas have been used to keep down IT labor costs in the US, for example.
True, and what needs to happen is that all aspects of foreign trade need to be reviewed and debated. This nonsense of letting US transnationals outsource every possible higher level job, and export every manufacturing job to the world's cheapest labor, then allow them untariffed access back to US markets will just continue to lower the standard of living in the US.
In China, India, Indonesia and other nations, there is a 3 billion plus population that contains more unemployed and underemployed citizens than the US has citizens. The notion that we can continue this outsourcing and job exporting policy to cheap labor nations and have a healthy US economy is utter nonsense. But things will have to get worse before some give up their pet economic theories, and before our bought and paid for Congress can be gradually replaced.
We're changing from a free market to a Soviet style market? It seems to me that we haven't had a free market in decades. IMHO, the regulations and lack of a free market are what caused the economic collapse. (A lot of powerful companies/banks used their government influence to create legislation/regulations to beat their competition out of existence.) We aren't going from a free market to Soviet communism we are going from socialism-lite to full blown Soviet communism/fascism.
You need to see the big picture. Give em a little time.
nah. there’ll always be a free market. It’ll just be illegal and have huge premia attached to it, that’s all.
Ralston-Purina. Old firm, makes money, nobody ever woofs at them for rapacious or immoral activities.
This globalist is fretting over the set back to globalism. “Nationalism” - for us that means the constitutional rule of law rather than global rule of law and trade in our own country’s interest rather than in the vision of global wealth transfer and IMF bankster access, and secure borders/immigration versus free invasion of the West and the US by third world block heads.
He is calling the NWO - “free markets.” He’s calling the agenda of “citizens of the world” free markets. He knows it’s over as far as targeted citizens go and is angry about it.
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