The Free-market Myth That Wouldn’t Die

[Guest BoomBoomCrash]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

A little known piece of propaganda Regan put out telling people of the evils of socialism and socialised medicine.

Edited July 4, 2009 by BoomBoomCrash

[Where is my pen?]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

A little known piece of propaganda Regan put out telling people of the evils of socialism and socialised medicine.

Am listening to it. Regan is quite correct.

Edited July 5, 2009 by Where is my pen?

[Meerkat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

A little known piece of propaganda Regan put out telling people of the evils of socialism and socialised medicine.

What is a "myth" to you? Why do you call the free market "a myth"? Surely it would never die as it is the only true and sustainable means to full employment and welfare of common men.

[interestrateripoff]

Is Reagan the man who said the Party could continue and set off US debt expansion to fund it all?

It appears that did happen, I say lets take advice from this man at least he understands debt is wealth.

Whereas Carter said the US had to learn to live within it's means.

No surprises for guessing who won the election.

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRdLpem-AAs

A little known piece of propaganda Regan put out telling people of the evils of socialism and socialised medicine.

when we have a free market in money

and we allow incompetent businesses to fail without government bailouts

then you can say the free market has failed

but a free market never fails as the market adjusts to changes

centralism always ultimately fails and many people pay the price of it

as a simple example price fixing never works - central banks influenced the price of credit to lower than the free market would have allowed - we got malinvestment in housing and other projects and now we have the fall out

[interestrateripoff]

when we have a free market in money

and we allow incompetent businesses to fail without government bailouts

then you can say the free market has failed

but a free market never fails as the market adjusts to changes

centralism always ultimately fails and many people pay the price of it

as a simple example price fixing never works - central banks influenced the price of credit to lower than the free market would have allowed - we got malinvestment in housing and other projects and now we have the fall out

The free market always will fail because the equilibrium is never maintained for any length of time.

It works in theory but not in reality.

Monopolies get built and creates centralism.

Paradoxes are built into the free market ensuring that it can never deliver what it's supporters believe.

However that doesn't mean that centralist systems work either.

[Meerkat]

The free market always will fail because the equilibrium is never maintained for any length of time.

It works in theory but not in reality.

Monopolies get built and creates centralism.

Paradoxes are built into the free market ensuring that it can never deliver what it's supporters believe.

However that doesn't mean that centralist systems work either.

Maybe you should look into the 19th century. Sure, malinvestments may develop, but there is never the govy to prop them up and encourage even more - that's why crises in, for ex., the 19th century never lasted for too long (1/2y of pain and over). That is the key. Market allows for adjustments. Governments too often don't. So, what's anyway your alternative? To have Mervs & Browns going?

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

The free market always will fail because the equilibrium is never maintained for any length of time.

It works in theory but not in reality.

Monopolies get built and creates centralism.

Paradoxes are built into the free market ensuring that it can never deliver what it's supporters believe.

However that doesn't mean that centralist systems work either.

the free market adjusts

monopolies survive because governments impose barriers to entry - laws licences regulations etc

[interestrateripoff]

Maybe you should look into the 19th century. Sure, malinvestments may develop, but there is never the govy to prop them up and encourage even more - that's why crises in, for ex., the 19th century never lasted for too long (1/2y of pain and over). That is the key. Market allows for adjustments. Governments too often don't. So, what's anyway your alternative? To have Mervs & Browns going?

It would be hard to extrapolate what happened in the past to what happens now. The problem is the system has developed in such a scale now that you risk the domino effect.

Just look at the panic that Lehmans caused.

People are stupid they will keep making the same mistakes over and over again, because this time it's different.

One paradox is the free market needs the state to be the regulator, but in being the regulator the state expands and morphs beyond it.

Have you get any specific examples you can link to for the above?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

In the United States, the Long Depression began with the Panic of 1873. The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the contraction following the panic as lasting from October 1873 to March 1879. At 65 months, it is the longest-lasting contraction identified by the NBER, eclipsing the Great Depression's 43 months of contraction.[1] [2] Following the end of the episode in 1879, the U.S. economy would remain unstable, experiencing recessions for 114 of the 253 months until January 1901.[1]

And this fits into your theory how?

[interestrateripoff]

the free market adjusts

monopolies survive because governments impose barriers to entry - laws licences regulations etc

Monopolies may survive because they become the govt and create laws, licences, regulations.

[lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)]

It would be hard to extrapolate what happened in the past to what happens now. The problem is the system has developed in such a scale now that you risk the domino effect.

Just look at the panic that Lehmans caused.

People are stupid they will keep making the same mistakes over and over again, because this time it's different.

One paradox is the free market needs the state to be the regulator, but in being the regulator the state expands and morphs beyond it.

Have you get any specific examples you can link to for the above?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression

And this fits into your theory how?

http://www.vistax64.com/chillout-room/1860...ion-1873-a.html

The Depression of 1873 which closely mirrors world-wide events of today was much more severe than the Depression of the 1930's, and lasted Almost six years.

Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it. - Winston Churchill

The problems had emerged around 1870, starting in Europe. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, formed in 1867, in the states unified by Prussia into the German empire, and in France, the emperors supported a flowering of new lending institutions that issued mortgages for municipal and residential construction, especially in the capitals of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. Mortgages were easier to obtain than before, and a building boom commenced. Land values seemed to climb and climb; borrowers ravenously assumed more and more credit, using unbuilt or half-built houses as collateral. The most marvelous spots for sightseers in the three cities today are the magisterial buildings erected in the so-called founder period.

\But the economic fundamentals were shaky. Wheat exporters from Russia and Central Europe faced a new international competitor who drastically undersold them. The 19th-century version of containers manufactured in China and bound for Wal-Mart consisted of produce from farmers in the American Midwest. They used grain elevators, conveyer belts, and massive steam ships to export trainloads of wheat to abroad. Britain, the biggest importer of wheat, shifted to the cheap stuff quite suddenly around 1871. By 1872 kerosene and manufactured food were rocketing out of America's heartland, undermining rapeseed, flour, and beef prices. The crash came in Central Europe in May 1873, as it became clear that the region's assumptions about continual economic growth were too optimistic. Europeans faced what they came to call the American Commercial Invasion. A new industrial superpower had arrived, one whose low costs threatened European trade and a European way of life.

As continental banks tumbled, British banks held back their capital, unsure of which institutions were most involved in the mortgage crisis. The cost to borrow money from another bank - the interbank lending rate - reached impossibly high rates. This banking crisis hit the United States in the fall of 1873. Railroad companies tumbled first. They had crafted complex financial instruments that promised a fixed return, though few understood the underlying object that was guaranteed to investors in case of default. (Answer: nothing). The bonds had sold well at first, but they had tumbled after 1871 as investors began to doubt their value, prices weakened, and many railroads took on short-term bank loans to continue laying track. Then, as short-term lending rates skyrocketed across the Atlantic in 1873, the railroads were in trouble. When the railroad financier Jay Cooke proved unable to pay off his debts, the stock market crashed in September, closing hundreds of banks over the next three years. The panic continued for more than four years in the United States and for nearly six years in Europe.

http://mises.org/story/3127

The currently fashionable attitude toward the business cycle stems, actually, from Karl Marx. Marx saw that, before the Industrial Revolution in approximately the late eighteenth century, there were no regularly recurring booms and depressions. There would be a sudden economic crisis whenever some king made war or confiscated the property of his subject; but there was no sign of the peculiarly modern phenomena of general and fairly regular swings in business fortunes, of expansions and contractions. Since these cycles also appeared on the scene at about the same time as modern industry, Marx concluded that business cycles were an inherent feature of the capitalist market economy. All the various current schools of economic thought, regardless of their other differences and the different causes that they attribute to the cycle, agree on this vital point: That these business cycles originate somewhere deep within the free-market economy. The market economy is to blame. Karl Marx believed that the periodic depressions would get worse and worse, until the masses would be moved to revolt and destroy the system, while the modern economists believe that the government can successfully stabilize depressions and the cycle. But all parties agree that the fault lies deep within the market economy and that if anything can save the day, it must be some form of massive government intervention.

There are, however, some critical problems in the assumption that the market economy is the culprit. For "general economic theory" teaches us that supply and demand always tend to be in equilibrium in the market and that therefore prices of products as well as of the factors that contribute to production are always tending toward some equilibrium point. Even though changes of data, which are always taking place, prevent equilibrium from ever being reached, there is nothing in the general theory of the market system that would account for regular and recurring boom-and-bust phases of the business cycle. Modern economists "solve" this problem by simply keeping their general price and market theory and their business cycle theory in separate, tightly-sealed compartments, with never the twain meeting, much less integrated with each other. Economists, unfortunately, have forgotten that there is only one economy and therefore only one integrated economic theory. Neither economic life nor the structure of theory can or should be in watertight compartments; our knowledge of the economy is either one integrated whole or it is nothing. Yet most economists are content to apply totally separate and, indeed, mutually exclusive, theories for general price analysis and for business cycles. They cannot be genuine economic scientists so long as they are content to keep operating in this primitive way.

But there are still graver problems with the currently fashionable approach. Economists also do not see one particularly critical problem because they do not bother to square their business cycle and general price theories: the peculiar breakdown of the entrepreneurial function at times of economic crisis and depression. In the market economy, one of the most vital functions of the businessman is to be an "entrepreneur," a man who invests in productive methods, who buys equipment and hires labor to produce something which he is not sure will reap him any return. In short, the entrepreneurial function is the function of forecasting the uncertain future. Before embarking on any investment or line of production, the entrepreneur, or "enterpriser," must estimate present and future costs and future revenues and therefore estimate whether and how much profits he will earn from the investment. If he forecasts well and significantly better than his business competitors, he will reap profits from his investment. The better his forecasting, the higher the profits he will earn. If, on the other hand, he is a poor forecaster and overestimates the demand for his product, he will suffer losses and pretty soon be forced out of the business.

The market economy, then, is a profit-and-loss economy, in which the acumen and ability of business entrepreneurs is gauged by the profits and losses they reap. The market economy, moreover, contains a built-in mechanism, a kind of natural selection, that ensures the survival and the flourishing of the superior forecaster and the weeding-out of the inferior ones. For the more profits reaped by the better forecasters, the greater become their business responsibilities, and the more they will have available to invest in the productive system. On the other hand, a few years of making losses will drive the poorer forecasters and entrepreneurs out of business altogether and push them into the ranks of salaried employees.

If, then, the market economy has a built-in natural selection mechanism for good entrepreneurs, this means that, generally, we would expect not many business firms to be making losses. And, in fact, if we look around at the economy on an average day or year, we will find that losses are not very widespread. But, in that case, the odd fact that needs explaining is this: How is it that, periodically, in times of the onset of recessions and especially in steep depressions, the business world suddenly experiences a massive cluster of severe losses? A moment arrives when business firms, previously highly astute entrepreneurs in their ability to make profits and avoid losses, suddenly and dismayingly find themselves, almost all of them, suffering severe and unaccountable losses? How come? Here is a momentous fact that any theory of depressions must explain. An explanation such as "underconsumption"  a drop in total consumer spending  is not sufficient, for one thing, because what needs to be explained is why businessmen, able to forecast all manner of previous economic changes and developments, proved themselves totally and catastrophically unable to forecast this alleged drop in consumer demand. Why this sudden failure in forecasting ability?

An adequate theory of depressions, then, must account for the tendency of the economy to move through successive booms and busts, showing no sign of settling into any sort of smoothly moving, or quietly progressive, approximation of an equilibrium situation. In particular, a theory of depression must account for the mammoth cluster of errors which appears swiftly and suddenly at a moment of economic crisis, and lingers through the depression period until recovery. And there is a third universal fact that a theory of the cycle must account for. Invariably, the booms and busts are much more intense and severe in the "capital goods industries"  the industries making machines and equipment, the ones producing industrial raw materials or constructing industrial plants  than in the industries making consumers' goods. Here is another fact of business cycle life that must be explained  and obviously can't be explained by such theories of depression as the popular underconsumption doctrine: That consumers aren't spending enough on consumer goods. For if insufficient spending is the culprit, then how is it that retail sales are the last and the least to fall in any depression, and that depression really hits such industries as machine tools, capital equipment, construction, and raw materials? Conversely, it is these industries that really take off in the inflationary boom phases of the business cycle, and not those businesses serving the consumer. An adequate theory of the business cycle, then, must also explain the far greater intensity of booms and busts in the non-consumer goods, or "producers' goods," industries.

Fortunately, a correct theory of depression and of the business cycle does exist, even though it is universally neglected in present-day economics. It, too, has a long tradition in economic thought. This theory began with the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume, and with the eminent early nineteenth century English classical economist David Ricardo. Essentially, these theorists saw that another crucial institution had developed in the mid-eighteenth century, alongside the industrial system. This was the institution of banking, with its capacity to expand credit and the money supply (first, in the form of paper money, or bank notes, and later in the form of demand deposits, or checking accounts, that are instantly redeemable in cash at the banks). It was the operations of these commercial banks which, these economists saw, held the key to the mysterious recurrent cycles of expansion and contraction, of boom and bust, that had puzzled observers since the mid-eighteenth century.

The Ricardian analysis of the business cycle went something as follows: The natural moneys emerging as such on the world free market are useful commodities, generally gold and silver. If money were confined simply to these commodities, then the economy would work in the aggregate as it does in particular markets: A smooth adjustment of supply and demand, and therefore no cycles of boom and bust. But the injection of bank credit adds another crucial and disruptive element. For the banks expand credit and therefore bank money in the form of notes or deposits which are theoretically redeemable on demand in gold, but in practice clearly are not. For example, if a bank has 1000 ounces of gold in its vaults, and it issues instantly redeemable warehouse receipts for 2500 ounces of gold, then it clearly has issued 1500 ounces more than it can possibly redeem. But so long as there is no concerted "run" on the bank to cash in these receipts, its warehouse-receipts function on the market as equivalent to gold, and therefore the bank has been able to expand the money supply of the country by 1500 gold ounces.

The banks, then, happily begin to expand credit, for the more they expand credit the greater will be their profits. This results in the expansion of the money supply within a country, say England. As the supply of paper and bank money in England increases, the money incomes and expenditures of Englishmen rise, and the increased money bids up prices of English goods. The result is inflation and a boom within the country. But this inflationary boom, while it proceeds on its merry way, sows the seeds of its own demise. For as English money supply and incomes increase, Englishmen proceed to purchase more goods from abroad. Furthermore, as English prices go up, English goods begin to lose their competitiveness with the products of other countries which have not inflated, or have been inflating to a lesser degree. Englishmen begin to buy less at home and more abroad, while foreigners buy less in England and more at home; the result is a deficit in the English balance of payments, with English exports falling sharply behind imports. But if imports exceed exports, this means that money must flow out of England to foreign countries. And what money will this be? Surely not English bank notes or deposits, for Frenchmen or Germans or Italians have little or no interest in keeping their funds locked up in English banks. These foreigners will therefore take their bank notes and deposits and present them to the English banks for redemption in gold  and gold will be the type of money that will tend to flow persistently out of the country as the English inflation proceeds on its way. But this means that English bank credit money will be, more and more, pyramiding on top of a dwindling gold base in the English bank vaults. As the boom proceeds, our hypothetical bank will expand its warehouse receipts issued from, say 2500 ounces to 4000 ounces, while its gold base dwindles to, say, 800. As this process intensifies, the banks will eventually become frightened. For the banks, after all, are obligated to redeem their liabilities in cash, and their cash is flowing out rapidly as their liabilities pile up. Hence, the banks will eventually lose their nerve, stop their credit expansion, and in order to save themselves, contract their bank loans outstanding. Often, this retreat is precipitated by bankrupting runs on the banks touched off by the public, who had also been getting increasingly nervous about the ever more shaky condition of the nation's banks.

The bank contraction reverses the economic picture; contraction and bust follow boom. The banks pull in their horns, and businesses suffer as the pressure mounts for debt repayment and contraction. The fall in the supply of bank money, in turn, leads to a general fall in English prices. As money supply and incomes fall, and English prices collapse, English goods become relatively more attractive in terms of foreign products, and the balance of payments reverses itself, with exports exceeding imports. As gold flows into the country, and as bank money contracts on top of an expanding gold base, the condition of the banks becomes much sounder.

This, then, is the meaning of the depression phase of the business cycle. Note that it is a phase that comes out of, and inevitably comes out of, the preceding expansionary boom. It is the preceding inflation that makes the depression phase necessary. We can see, for example, that the depression is the process by which the market economy adjusts, throws off the excesses and distortions of the previous inflationary boom, and reestablishes a sound economic condition. The depression is the unpleasant but necessary reaction to the distortions and excesses of the previous boom.

Why, then, does the next cycle begin? Why do business cycles tend to be recurrent and continuous? Because when the banks have pretty well recovered, and are in a sounder condition, they are then in a confident position to proceed to their natural path of bank credit expansion, and the next boom proceeds on its way, sowing the seeds for the next inevitable bust.

But if banking is the cause of the business cycle, aren't the banks also a part of the private market economy, and can't we therefore say that the free market is still the culprit, if only in the banking segment of that free market? The answer is No, for the banks, for one thing, would never be able to expand credit in concert were it not for the intervention and encouragement of government. For if banks were truly competitive, any expansion of credit by one bank would quickly pile up the debts of that bank in its competitors, and its competitors would quickly call upon the expanding bank for redemption in cash. In short, a bank's rivals will call upon it for redemption in gold or cash in the same way as do foreigners, except that the process is much faster and would nip any incipient inflation in the bud before it got started. Banks can only expand comfortably in unison when a Central Bank exists, essentially a governmental bank, enjoying a monopoly of government business, and a privileged position imposed by government over the entire banking system. It is only when central banking got established that the banks were able to expand for any length of time and the familiar business cycle got underway in the modern world.

The central bank acquires its control over the banking system by such governmental measures as: Making its own liabilities legal tender for all debts and receivable in taxes; granting the central bank monopoly of the issue of bank notes, as contrasted to deposits (in England the Bank of England, the governmentally established central bank, had a legal monopoly of bank notes in the London area); or through the outright forcing of banks to use the central bank as their client for keeping their reserves of cash (as in the United States and its Federal Reserve System). Not that the banks complain about this intervention; for it is the establishment of central banking that makes long-term bank credit expansion possible, since the expansion of Central Bank notes provides added cash reserves for the entire banking system and permits all the commercial banks to expand their credit together. Central banking works like a cozy compulsory bank cartel to expand the banks' liabilities; and the banks are now able to expand on a larger base of cash in the form of central bank notes as well as gold.

So now we see, at last, that the business cycle is brought about, not by any mysterious failings of the free market economy, but quite the opposite: By systematic intervention by government in the market process. Government intervention brings about bank expansion and inflation, and, when the inflation comes to an end, the subsequent depression-adjustment comes into play

if enough people dont wake up to this simple fact soon

i'm gonna go and live in a cave

Edited July 5, 2009 by lowrentyieldmakessense(honest!)

[interestrateripoff]

The market economy, then, is a profit-and-loss economy, in which the acumen and ability of business entrepreneurs is gauged by the profits and losses they reap. The market economy, moreover, contains a built-in mechanism, a kind of natural selection, that ensures the survival and the flourishing of the superior forecaster and the weeding-out of the inferior ones. For the more profits reaped by the better forecasters, the greater become their business responsibilities, and the more they will have available to invest in the productive system. On the other hand, a few years of making losses will drive the poorer forecasters and entrepreneurs out of business altogether and push them into the ranks of salaried employees.

We appear to have got a circular argument it all depends on how you wish to view what's happening.

I see this as the market economy getting greedy, creating inflation and then govt trying to prevent systemic collapse and social unrest (having fed off the greed to expand). Having people literally removing the individuals from society by true natural selection ie killing them still won't prevent collapses from happening, nor is this desirable because the innocent would die as grudges get settled.

You see it as the opposite.

We are disagreeing over the causes, although we both acknowledge that a correction is needed and is coming.

All arguments are flawed. Nothing is perfect if it was we'd be gods.

[Laughing Gnome]

A truly free market could never fail. I will not dispute it; it's a truism, rather like saying nature can never fail. Should manunkind be exterminated, some form of life will carry on.

Of course in a truly free market, many would succumb to hunger, disease, drugs, prostitution. You may regard this as a cleansing process.

Personally, I would not like to re-visit the 19th century or bring back rickets.

[stormymonday_2011]

Maybe you should look into the 19th century. Sure, malinvestments may develop, but there is never the govy to prop them up and encourage even more - that's why crises in, for ex., the 19th century never lasted for too long (1/2y of pain and over). That is the key. Market allows for adjustments. Governments too often don't. So, what's anyway your alternative? To have Mervs & Browns going?

The economic crises of the 1840s and 1870s seem to have run for a fair few years.

Lots of 'Years Of Revolutions' as well (1830, 1848 and 1870-1).

The very existence of political and social vested interest groups means that free markets never operate without government interference even in the Victorian era.

[Grudge_Match]

The free market has failed for all to see-- except blind dogmatists.

Greed of the few will cost the normal Joe a large chunk of their pension and the 'joy' or working to 70.

... and dont get me started on the damage to the environment of profit above other values that actually more meaning to the citizen.

Time for a new order.....

[domo]

The free market is all that has survived, the monetary system is bankrupt, so by extension the government is bankrupt. Theft (taxation) has reached historic proportions, yet our quality of life is plumeting, as we spend more and more on the basics and cannot cover the essentials like utility costs and housing, transport, taxes and so forth.

Socialism has failed, yet it has barely begun.

People will continue trading, whether on the white or black market is another matter.

[SMAC67]

A truly free market could never fail. I will not dispute it; it's a truism, rather like saying nature can never fail. Should manunkind be exterminated, some form of life will carry on.

(1) Just because you are a true believer doesn't mean that you have anything to rely on except faith. What you are refering to industrialisation, it is designed to fail. This means that your next point is also wrong as nature can fail, you just have "feck it up" properly. Since the only objective of life itself is life, I find it hard to believe that brnging about death will lead to a continuation of life. The planet earth can easily be turned into a barren rock like Mars.

Of course in a truly free market, many would succumb to hunger, disease, drugs, prostitution. You may regard this as a cleansing process.

(2) In an industrialised society operating under any of the guises it clokes itself in will automatically result in death and mayhem of the highest order. In a death cult like ours, death is everything, and life an irrelevance. You cannot have industrialiation and a "free market", they are incompatible.

Personally, I would not like to re-visit the 19th century or bring back rickets.

(3) Oh don't worry, you won't get to visit something as pleasant as the 19th century, you are going to enjoy the fruits of the 21st. War on a global scale, disease of infinite unpleasantness, undrinkable water, and inedible food. You are gonna love it. The death cult will make sure you die a quite painful death.

As an aside I love Regan, he really hated the American people, and spent his time figuring out ways in which to kill them all off. He has certainly accelerated the demise of the US and I'm sure Obama will continue the good work.

The great thing about our current system is that it is designed to self destruct completely. Said destruction should remove most of the people on the planet.

40% of Americans believe that life on earth will end within this century and that they are looking forward to it. The US is a death cult and it is determined to remove life from planet earth.

I have to say, I think this is a good thing, and capitalism is the tool to make it happen.

[domo]

As an aside I love Regan, he really hated the American people, and spent his time figuring out ways in which to kill them all off. He has certainly accelerated the demise of the US and I'm sure Obama will continue the good work.

The great thing about our current system is that it is designed to self destruct completely. Said destruction should remove most of the people on the planet.

40% of Americans believe that life on earth will end within this century and that they are looking forward to it. The US is a death cult and it is determined to remove life from planet earth.

I have to say, I think this is a good thing, and capitalism is the tool to make it happen.

Yet capitalism doesn't kill people, the state does.

[SMAC67]

Wrong, try again, the state and capitalism are one and same. As someone who is completely brain washed and unable to think beyond what you are programmed to accept I think you will find the following years somewhat traumatic.

I always find it amusing that those who espouse capitalism haven't the foggiest idea how it works. Capitalism is actually industrialism, and the state the means to ensure you comply or die. It really is quite simple.

And no, you aren't going to be saved. What is going to happen is you are going to lose your job, your money, your housde, and the ability to feed yourself. At that point you will turn to "crime" as defined by the capitalists, for which your punishment will be death.

Bye bye middle class, hello scum class.

In ten years, assuming you are still alive, please let me know your thoughts on capitalism.

[Injin]

Wrong, try again, the state and capitalism are one and same. As someone who is completely brain washed and unable to think beyond what you are programmed to accept I think you will find the following years somewhat traumatic.

I always find it amusing that those who espouse capitalism haven't the foggiest idea how it works. Capitalism is actually industrialism, and the state the means to ensure you comply or die. It really is quite simple.

And no, you aren't going to be saved. What is going to happen is you are going to lose your job, your money, your housde, and the ability to feed yourself. At that point you will turn to "crime" as defined by the capitalists, for which your punishment will be death.

Bye bye middle class, hello scum class.

In ten years, assuming you are still alive, please let me know your thoughts on capitalism.

The state has existed for millenia in various forms.

Yet this vast wealth you see all around you wasn't there in the days of kings, emperors and despots of all kinds.

If the state and capitalism are the same - how come they waited so long?

[50sQuiff]

The 'free market' is the natural state of man and don't let any Gramscian socialist con you into thinking otherwise. The 'free market' is what free men do when they're left to do as they please, 'free' from control freaks, despots and Fabian New Labour.

[SMAC67]

The state has only existed as long as civilisation, about 6000 years. We are simply the product of the inevitable expansion from the seat of civilisation in the middle east. Humans have existed and survived and been happy for many millenia without either state or it's retarded cousin, capitalism. Oh yeh, and I don't advocate any other "ism" either. It's all the same, you can have a king, a president, a commisar, and the results are the same.

What we have front row seats for is the end of civilisation, the end of the state, the end of capitalism, and what a spectacular show it will be. You can already feel the fear as people desperately try to prop up the unsustainable. More regulation, less regulation, more capitalism, less capitalism, it's all just empty words.

Whilst we won't be living in a Mad Max style world by next Tuesday, enough of the world already does, and like the desert it will reclaim the land from civilisation. Violence and theft, the two basic tenets of civilisation will continue to operate whilst everything collapses. Indeed it will become even more prevalent.

Even the state and capitlaist controlled media are now reporting on the increased levels of theft and violence. Of course they report it because they don't understand it.

Now, we can have another philosophical debate Injin, but ultimately it won't matter, the inevitable end is drawing ever closer. The question is whether or not life will be able to exist beyond the coming destruction.

All governments, and all states, and all corporations will try to maintain the status quo but introducing more theft, and more violence. They already use nuclear weapons on people and I don't doubt that they will continue to do so.

When the US government loses control of the many cities that are currently imploding they will remove the problem by whatever means necessary. You are going to live to see the US government (or what is left of it) nuke the population of Detroit or some other forgotten hell hole.

The best you can do is to try and survive whilst all around you is collapsing. Of course, without the state, how will you achieve this? You own nothing, and you will need to counter the states violence in order to have a chance of survival.

Tricky eh?

[SMAC67]

The 'free market' is the natural state of man and don't let any Gramscian socialist con you into thinking otherwise. The 'free market' is what free men do when they're left to do as they please, 'free' from control freaks, despots and Fabian New Labour.

Welcome robot, your programming has been a success, we will need you to control those that wish to be free. What are you prepared to do to help the state?

[domo]

Wrong, try again, the state and capitalism are one and same. As someone who is completely brain washed and unable to think beyond what you are programmed to accept I think you will find the following years somewhat traumatic.

I always find it amusing that those who espouse capitalism haven't the foggiest idea how it works. Capitalism is actually industrialism, and the state the means to ensure you comply or die. It really is quite simple.

And no, you aren't going to be saved. What is going to happen is you are going to lose your job, your money, your housde, and the ability to feed yourself. At that point you will turn to "crime" as defined by the capitalists, for which your punishment will be death.

Bye bye middle class, hello scum class.

In ten years, assuming you are still alive, please let me know your thoughts on capitalism.

There is only freedom and statism, the terminology may change, but that simple fact never does.

[Flat Bear]

The 'free market' is the natural state of man and don't let any Gramscian socialist con you into thinking otherwise. The 'free market' is what free men do when they're left to do as they please, 'free' from control freaks, despots and Fabian New Labour.

+1

But obvious really.