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Post by Political Atheist on Oct 23, 2009 5:14:21 GMT -6
I am a believer in absolute liberty and to be truly free there must be free trade. All markets are run by the individuals that participate in them (producers and consumers) who's actions are wildly unpredictable on an individual basis. The only constant factor in markets is government. Although governmental laws change they are significantly slower then market changes. If we remove all governmental barriers in the world economy (that being taxation, borders, corporations, regulations, etc.) what do you think would be the result economically speaking? Maybe chaos theory can help explain the answer. Please, try to remove all biases from your mind as much as possible.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Oct 23, 2009 12:33:57 GMT -6
I am a believer in absolute liberty and to be truly free there must be free trade. All markets are run by the individuals that participate in them (producers and consumers) who's actions are wildly unpredictable on an individual basis. The only constant factor in markets is government. Although governmental laws change they are significantly slower then market changes. If we remove all governmental barriers in the world economy (that being taxation, borders, corporations, regulations, etc.) what do you think would be the result economically speaking? Maybe chaos theory can help explain the answer. Please, try to remove all biases from your mind as much as possible. We'd have world Feudalism. All money would flow to those at the top, who'd hire their own armies to protect their wealth and their position. The wealthiest fraction of a percent would own all the land and means of production. The remainder of the people of the world would live in abject poverty, like they lived in medieval Europe and in pre-Revolution France. All workers would essentially be slaves. This is basically the direction multinational Corporations and international bankers are pushing us in now.
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Post by judes on Oct 23, 2009 22:09:49 GMT -6
Exactly ULC, those were the same thoughts I had. I wonder if political atheist extends his "absolute liberty" to workers being able to form unions freely and strike at will, and also the liberty to create whatever one wishes with out patent or property protections? Without any rules the system breaks down to law of the jungle. And in the jungle if I have larger claws and teeth I can take your bounty. Money has no power in the jungle. Most people who profess such beliefs usually stop short of only advocating rules that protect the property of the wealthy and not the property of labor which in most cases is his body and "soul" (dignity).
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Post by waltc on Oct 24, 2009 1:01:56 GMT -6
If we remove all governmental barriers in the world economy (that being taxation, borders, corporations, regulations, etc.) what do you think would be the result economically speaking? Maybe chaos theory can help explain the answer. Please, try to remove all biases from your mind as much as possible.
A train wreck like Somalia or Afghanistan but on a global scale with a handful of corporate overlords controlling whats left of the world's wealth through mercenaries.
It would be the final dark age of mankind.
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Post by agito on Oct 24, 2009 1:52:06 GMT -6
I disagree with you UnLC. While your argument is where my sentiment is, logic dictates otherwise over the long term (but of course, most of our discourse in these forums doesn't concern the long term). Our civilization went from feudalism to mercantilism to capitalism. At each of those transitions, power was trasnferred to the more numerous party. Whatever comes next after capitalism (which will probably still be called capitalism, but will have a suffix applied to it e.g., "anthropocentric-capitalism"), will involve a similar dislocation of power.
but at the same time, this also illustrates the fallacy of Political Atheist's (whom i'll call PA) posited query. Just as the economical market has become more liberal as it has developed, the centralized role (not necessarily maintained by the government mind you) has become more refined, and more necessary. Importantly, it has done this with the consent of the people, particularly in democracies.
FOR INSTANCE: is not 100% true, but it is just as true as
The second fallacy was the statement that "The only constant factor in markets is government". Which is either not true or not helpful to the argument you are trying to make.
(Por ejemplo, if you were to take the government out of the market, then I don't know what you would end up with, but it wouldn't be a "market" because "the only constant factor in markets is government". logic is a bitch like that)
The constant factors in markets is that they have participents and they have currency. And they don't always have governments. Picture the trappers of 18th century america trading pelts for ammunition or alcohol as they meet in the wilderness. no government involved, but a definite market.
Alas, we don't trade pelts nowadays do we. We use currency, managed by a centralized location we don't (usually) think much about. why? because we wanted it. (maybe now a majority of people are "unwanting" it, that remains to be seen)
And that brings us to the answer to your question:
economically speaking enough participants would be harmed to bring about new government barriers demanded by the people participants.
If you know anything about chaos theory, you will see metaphorical analogues in nature that support this argument.
*I will admit that one plus side of this scenario is that any (or a significant number of) "unnecessary" government barriers would be lost through the re-synthicated (<--I nominate that to be a real word) government. But again, it would come at (significant) harm to the participants
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Post by fredorbob on Oct 24, 2009 2:14:29 GMT -6
I am a believer in absolute liberty and to be truly free there must be free trade. All markets are run by the individuals that participate in them (producers and consumers) who's actions are wildly unpredictable on an individual basis. The only constant factor in markets is government. Although governmental laws change they are significantly slower then market changes. If we remove all governmental barriers in the world economy (that being taxation, borders, corporations, regulations, etc.) what do you think would be the result economically speaking? Maybe chaos theory can help explain the answer. Please, try to remove all biases from your mind as much as possible. You're naive if you think you're going to get every government on the planet to remove trade barriers, and even if you could do it, it would lower US wages to the global median wage which is around 50 cents an hour.
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Post by graybeard on Oct 24, 2009 5:54:08 GMT -6
When wages go down, demand follows, and you end up with everyone the poorer.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Oct 25, 2009 2:12:03 GMT -6
When wages go down, demand follows, and you end up with everyone the poorer. Exactly right. When wages/income are redistributed upward, it reduces aggregate spending & consumer demand because the more affluent have a lower average propensity to consume--i.e., they devote a smaller fraction of their income to spending. Thus the same amount of income redistributed upward has a lower production demand-creating effect.
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Post by Political Atheist on Oct 28, 2009 2:55:53 GMT -6
Maybe I must be more specific about what I mean by government. Governments are just systems of control thatt are monoplolies (the only way monopolies can possibly exist is if competitions is forcefully supressed) in certain regions. Sure they can allow freedoms but they are also looked to supress it (that's a scary power). And no, an absolute free world would not be lawless or crimeless (how is it possible to be a criminal if everything is allowed?) But. The regional market would probrably form governmental like structures that were more participitory and be more easily to escape from corruption. Of course wages can possibly fall why would they always just go up? Of course war could not be very likely without the huge corrupted money vaccuums we have now. Paper money would lose popularity and banaking will go bankrupt (well its current fractional reserve form will). Everyone would start making there own rules for the property they own and common laws will form. And remember coporations are only possible with giant governments. Most giant coporations would lose business because new competition would rise up in there markets because the regulators would be gone which means jobs would be created and competition would spark a pricing war with quality generally going up while price falling. Media companies would stop baby feeding us government supplied news. And people would be able to make more clear choices. And no, there will be no patents or intellectual property rights (that is a differnt argument). Sorry for mistakes I use the internet on a phone usually. And remember this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT it is not meant to be realisticly possible in our time just realisticly possible.
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Post by graybeard on Oct 29, 2009 7:27:52 GMT -6
I suggest you study the change from hunting and gathering to farming that occurred about 10,000 years ago.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 2, 2012 0:15:13 GMT -6
Just an afterthought on this discussion about Government.
Governments are a form of control and rule-setting bodies to control the actions of people and societies, and to ensure order. Truly representative Governments exert this power with the consent of the People, and to the degree the People desire.
Non-representative Governments exert control without the will of the People.
But without any Government, a non-Governmental body ultimately establishes control. In the case of control by a non-Governmental body, control is NOT by the People--by definition. Control is by those powerful enough to exert control over those with less power.
Non-Governmental control is NEVER representative of the People. Formal Governmental control, however, at least has the potential to be by the will of the People.
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