tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post7821900102309423067..comments2023-08-20T11:07:28.396+01:00Comments on Freeborn John: Red ToriesPeter Risdonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-31633927785312942192009-02-26T17:08:00.000+00:002009-02-26T17:08:00.000+00:00Hi Steve,Yes, the free market needs the state to i...Hi Steve,<BR/><BR/>Yes, the free market needs the state to intervene as discussed above. It's a misconception that it's a free-for-all. It isn't. It's a situation where people are free to supply or consume, where both are kept honest by the state - law of contract, property rights - and where the state acts to prevent monopoly or monopsony. We already have continuous state intervention. A free market would actually require less but different intervention.<BR/><BR/>Thatcher did do that. There was a bit more to it than just market economics - there had been terrible abuses of power by trades unions in the 1970s, and the Miner's Strike was a political rather than an industrial action. But for all the talk, she wasn't a free marketeer.<BR/><BR/>That's true about the FSA. Hong Kong was actually a very free market with the sort of regulation necessary for that to work.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-69159573713251369542009-02-26T16:54:00.000+00:002009-02-26T16:54:00.000+00:00But Thatcher did deploy the state in favour of bus...But Thatcher did deploy the state in favour of business. Breaking the trade unions required massive state intervention, both in the form of policing industrial disputes and laws curbing the activity of trade unions.<BR/><BR/>Left to its own devices, without regulation businesses tend to form cartels and conspire against the public. To achieve a free market in the way you seem to be defining it, would require continuous state intervention to break up oligopolies.<BR/><BR/>As for the regulations, even if we'd had the most zealous investigators in the world the FSA had very little power. Cronyism is a convenient excuse. The truth is that the FSA has no teeth, whoever is running it. It is no coincidence that HSBC was the least badly affected of the major banks. That's because many of its operations are run from Hong Kong which as nasty, old fashioned, tough regulations.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-67310864497408652782009-02-26T00:37:00.000+00:002009-02-26T00:37:00.000+00:00One nit pick - if those people of the same trade t...One nit pick - if those people of the same trade traded through cooperatives, they'd still conspire. This isn't specific to capitalism.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-1619048472714488112009-02-26T00:14:00.001+00:002009-02-26T00:14:00.001+00:00Mind you, there is match fixing, which is a conspi...Mind you, there is match fixing, which is a conspiracy against the consumer.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-42545052200010287522009-02-26T00:14:00.000+00:002009-02-26T00:14:00.000+00:00Laban, absolutely. TJ mentioned the prevention of ...Laban, absolutely. TJ mentioned the prevention of monopolies. I think that's essential and regret very much the way some people at the Adam Smith Institute have ignored this.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-48326653113720862702009-02-26T00:12:00.000+00:002009-02-26T00:12:00.000+00:00You may notice it doesn't apply to football, which...You may notice it doesn't apply to football, which is why IMHO it's not a business in the conventional sense. Man U could probably buy half a dozen Premiership clubs and close them down, but they'd look pretty silly with no one to play against.<BR/><BR/>Competition is an irritating fact of life in most business, it's the whole point of soccer.<BR/><BR/>I suppose you could have the same owners for all the top teams, and the games rigged to give the fans the illusion of competition. In fact that seems to be what we have with our political parties !Labanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12031578024191117985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-64436939089482546182009-02-26T00:07:00.000+00:002009-02-26T00:07:00.000+00:00As in "People of the same trade seldom meet togeth...As in "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public..." ?<BR/><BR/>It's true. The last thing a capitalist wants is a free market.<BR/><BR/>We need to do what the Americans used to do and break up large monopolies and near-monopolies. If there are 25 supermarket companies, and 10 of them get together to fix the maximum prices they'll offer farmers, that's a cartel and they'll go to jail if caught. But if one supermarket takes over the other nine and makes the same offer to the farmer, that's fair trade.Labanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12031578024191117985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-90996509685617015252009-02-25T23:26:00.000+00:002009-02-25T23:26:00.000+00:00Moreover, as I mentioned in the post, the abuse of...Moreover, as I mentioned in the post, the abuse of the idea of the free market isn't a later development. Adam Smith wrote about it. It's been there from the start. It's not an evolution, it's the old enemy.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-9900725427877727932009-02-25T22:46:00.000+00:002009-02-25T22:46:00.000+00:00The acknowledgement was in the spirit of fair deba...The acknowledgement was in the spirit of fair debate. It was argued by some communists that the Soviet Union wasn't a communist state. On the other hand, many argued it was. Galloway said the day it fell was the worst day of his life. <A HREF="http://freebornjohn.blogspot.com/2008/04/charlie.html" REL="nofollow">Charlie</A> supported it. PJ O'Rourke wrote of the people who visited it as an example of the future of humanity, but took their own toilet paper.<BR/><BR/>There's an apparent similarity with some apparent supporters of the free market who spend their time supporting vested interests.<BR/><BR/>And I can see your argument that this might have shifted the meaning of the term. But the Soviet Union didn't change the meaning of communism entirely. It did operate on a basis of common, or state, ownership. The cronyism you mention isn't a version of the free market, it's the antithesis of it. It's a fig leaf, not a corruption of the term.<BR/><BR/>So I don't agree that the meaning has changed. The meaning of "liberal" has changed. I rail against that, but accept it has happened. It hasn't happened with free market. There's no new definition, and there is with liberalism. It's just being used for camouflage by some people.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-79394360900398354332009-02-25T22:10:00.000+00:002009-02-25T22:10:00.000+00:00It wasn't really an argument at all, just a statem...It wasn't really an argument at all, just a statement of the obvious: that your defence of a theoretical "free market" against the reality of how merchants freely behave is essentially the same stance that trots in the 80s took on the subject of "state capitalism" (only to receive short shrift from the right for their trouble). Thanks for the acknowledgement.<BR/><BR/>Having swallowed a dictionary at a young age, I'm sympathetic to your view that words should have set meanings; but it's as unfashionable a position in modern politics as it is in modern linguistics. In everyday practice, terms have only the referents those using them ascribe to them - so just as the USSR was a "communist" state because the Party and its enemies in the west agreed that's what they were going to call the actually-existing system, so "the free market" has just become what both its advocates and its detractors call actually-existing crony capitalism. The existence of an archaic sense of the term, involving such things as voluntary exchange and open access, is really of interest only to historians and a few literal-minded pedants like thee and me.<BR/><BR/>Advocate a better system by all means, but complaining about misuse of language is a mug's game.Will Pickeringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08051985966790024245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-65672382396067373032009-02-25T16:17:00.000+00:002009-02-25T16:17:00.000+00:00Mind you, in the spirit of trying to see the other...Mind you, in the spirit of trying to see the other person's point if it's a fair one, it is true, I think, that mass murder, deportations and slave camps weren't what Marx had in mind.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-72539765747687562162009-02-25T16:04:00.000+00:002009-02-25T16:04:00.000+00:00That's argument from incredulity, Will. There's no...That's argument from incredulity, Will. There's nothing substantial there to debate.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-72732785222736056822009-02-25T16:00:00.000+00:002009-02-25T16:00:00.000+00:00I look forward to your follow-up article demonstra...I look forward to your follow-up article demonstrating that the USSR was not a communist state.Will Pickeringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08051985966790024245noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-47728162437824989632009-02-25T15:43:00.000+00:002009-02-25T15:43:00.000+00:00Yes, I like the Indian Bicycle Marketing thing.Yes, I like the Indian Bicycle Marketing thing.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-44611108439988383802009-02-25T15:41:00.000+00:002009-02-25T15:41:00.000+00:00Peter, broadly agreed.As to your last question "wh...Peter, broadly agreed.<BR/><BR/>As to your last question "why?", it is a phenomenon which I call <A HREF="http://markwadsworth.blogspot.com/2008/06/indian-bicycle-market.html" REL="nofollow">Indian Bicycle Marketing</A>.<BR/><BR/>In short, political parties are actually indistinguishable but are defined, in popular imagination, by the negative terms that the other parties use to describe them.Mark Wadsworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07733511175178098449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-15413926765414110742009-02-25T15:35:00.000+00:002009-02-25T15:35:00.000+00:00I agree, free markets also need rigorous enforceme...I agree, free markets also need rigorous enforcement of the law of contract and of property rights (though meritocracy, and Blond is also opposed to this, might require that property rights do not pass down the generations).<BR/><BR/>I think that overall the state would shrink, though.Peter Risdonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17792275403997179926noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-40874829592799933852009-02-25T15:25:00.000+00:002009-02-25T15:25:00.000+00:00"The idea that "free market liberalism" might cons..."The idea that "free market liberalism" might consist of deploying the state "in favour of the owner and entrepreneur" is stunningly wrong. It would mean the opposite. The state's role would shrink"<BR/><BR/>Not necessarily: if you want to enhance the benefits of genuinely free markets you need state regulation to prevent monopolies, lower barriers to entry, and increase entrepreneurial behaviour by reducing the downside of business failure by increasing welfare benefits.<BR/><BR/>But otherwise I entirely agree with what you're saying.TJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00095813897930533591noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12471112.post-15171936427139266412009-02-25T08:50:00.000+00:002009-02-25T08:50:00.000+00:00The parsimonious interpretation is that they are f...The parsimonious interpretation is that they are fools or knaves.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com