What IS The Free Market

[georgephillip]

dear, govts are monopolies and as such out Founders thought them the source of evil in human history and that was without seeing the great 20Century liberal monopolists: Hitler Stalin and Mao.

Now do you understand?

What did our Founders think about corporations?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Those who gain economic power through free markets eventually take over. Hence, robber barons followed by Wall Street and the Fed, etc.

dear, the Fed Chairman is usually a college professor appointed by the president and approved by Congress and supported intellectually by most college economics professors.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Society has decided the power over the natural monopoly of violence is best controlled through government working in the best interests of all its citizens.

Do you have a better idea?

the conservative/libertarian idea of our founders was that govt has been the greatest monopoly and as such the greatest source of evil in human history and so should be very very limited.

Welcome to your first lesson in American History!! See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance??

 

[bripat9643]

What the hell does "power is a natural monopoly" mean?

Natural Monopoly Economics Help
Society has decided the power over the natural monopoly of violence is best controlled through government working in the best interests of all its citizens.

Do you have a better idea?

"Natural monopolies" are a myth. You dislike monopolies, so you support creating a monopoly on the use of force called "government?" If monopoly is bad, then what's good about creating one that can use guns? The idea that you are going to be treated impartially in any dispute with this monopoly is beyond absurd.

AS I've said many times, my idea is to abolish the monopoly on the use of force.

You can find out how it would work here:

Mises Daily Mises Institute

 

[bripat9643]

Those who gain economic power through free markets eventually take over. Hence, robber barons followed by Wall Street and the Fed, etc.

dear, the Fed Chairman is usually a college professor appointed by the president and approved by Congress and supported intellectually by most college economics professors.

Actually, Fed Chairmen are usually bankers.

 

[regent]

I'm not sure what either of those choices mean.
Nor would I claim to know who is to blame. But the manipulation wouldn't be possible without the regulatory infrastructure.

What would exist in the absence of the regulatory infrastructure, feudalism, anarchy, or...?

We had no "regulator infrastructure" before the FDR Administration. What did we have before that? Is that your conception of Feudalism or anarchy?

There was plenty of government involvement in the economy including regulation before FDR. Might read Chief Justice Waite in the Munn case in 1877.

 

[bripat9643]

dear, govts are monopolies and as such out Founders thought them the source of evil in human history and that was without seeing the great 20Century liberal monopolists: Hitler Stalin and Mao.

Now do you understand?

What did our Founders think about corporations?

Corporations in the days of the Founders were a different animal from modern corporations. In those days a corporation was a legal monopoly over all commerce in a given geographical area that was granted by the King. The East India Company was a classic example.

East India Company - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

The East India Company (EIC), more properly called the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), was an English joint-stock company,[1] formed to pursue trade with the East Indies, but which ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and Qing China.

Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.[2]

The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth on 31December 1600,[3] making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Company's shares.[4] The government owned no shares and had only indirect control.

The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.[5] Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.​

 

[bripat9643]

I'm not sure what either of those choices mean.
Nor would I claim to know who is to blame. But the manipulation wouldn't be possible without the regulatory infrastructure.

What would exist in the absence of the regulatory infrastructure, feudalism, anarchy, or...?

We had no "regulator infrastructure" before the FDR Administration. What did we have before that? Is that your conception of Feudalism or anarchy?

There was plenty of government involvement in the economy including regulation before FDR. Might read Chief Justice Waite in the Munn case in 1877.

Horseshit. There was almost no regulation, especially when compared to today. There were no government bureaucracies to control various areas of the economy.

Munn v. Illinois - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877),[1] was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with corporate rates and agriculture. The Munn case opened the door for states to regulate certain businesses within their borders, including railroads, and was an important case in the struggle for public regulation of private enterprise in post-Civil War America.[2] Chief Justice Waite argued that the states may regulate the use of private property "when such regulation becomes necessary for the public good." Waite resurrected a Latin legal doctrine to support his view: "When property is affected with a public interest, it ceases to be juris privati only." [3] Munn was one of six cases, the so-called Granger cases, all decided in the United States Supreme Court during the same term, all bearing on the same point, and all decided on the same principles.[4] Later court decisions, however, sharply curtailed the government’s power to regulate business.​

All that says is that states can regulate commerce. I doubt anyone contested that position since the Constitution was ratified. States had to compete with each other, so their regulation was quite limited.

 

[georgephillip]

There was plenty of government involvement in the economy including regulation before FDR. Might read Chief Justice Waite in the Munn case in 1877.

"This case involved the right of the Illinois legislature to prescribe maximum charges for the storage of grain. Its implications, however, were far more sweeping, because it directly affected the constitutionality of state railroad regulation as well.

"The case arose because nine business firms acting together were able to fix the prices of storage and handling in Chicago grain elevators and warehouses, through which the produce of a vast middle-western farming area had to pass on its way to market.

"The Illinois legislature passed a law regulating warehouse storage charges.

"When the Illinois law was tested in the Supreme Court, the problem before the Court was to find a legal basis for regulating such property as grain elevators and railroads without setting a precedent for the regulation of all private property.

"For precedent, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite went back to Sir Matthew Hale, a seventeenth-castury English jurist, when had laid down the principle that property 'affected with a public interest' ceases to be an object of private law alone and becomes liable to public regulation.

Supreme Court Case Munn v. Illinois 1877 1876-1900 Documents American History From Revolution To Reconstruction and beyond

 

[georgephillip]

Corporations in the days of the Founders were a different animal from modern corporations. In those days a corporation was a legal monopoly over all commerce in a given geographical area that was granted by the King. The East India Company was a classic example.

Which explains why the tea tossed into Boston harbor belonged to the East India Company. US corporations of the time were nothing like England's. They were chartered by states for a specific time period and limited only to public works projects like canals and roads. Many of the founding generation saw the rise of private for-profit corporations as a threat to democracy, and they've been proven correct.

 

[bripat9643]

Corporations in the days of the Founders were a different animal from modern corporations. In those days a corporation was a legal monopoly over all commerce in a given geographical area that was granted by the King. The East India Company was a classic example.

Which explains why the tea tossed into Boston harbor belonged to the East India Company. US corporations of the time were nothing like England's. They were chartered by states for a specific time period and limited only to public works projects like canals and roads. Many of the founding generation saw the rise of private for-profit corporations as a threat to democracy, and they've been proven correct.

They were granted a monopoly, just like the East India Company. Those kinds of corporations were gradually phased out and a new kind appeared that was just a legal framework for running a business.

Corporations like the East India Company are what the Founding Fathers were against. Any sensible person would be opposed to such a grant of privilege.

 

[georgephillip]

Any sensible person would be opposed to such a grant of privilege.

Obviously, there were a lot of rich sensible Englishmen who felt entitled to such privilege. Just as today many rich sensible Americans feel entitled to privilege foreign corporations to equal status with US government policies that Americans rely on for safe food and a clean environment.

 

[regent]

It was Waite's history that was important, from the colonization period that belied your statement that regulation began with FDR.

 

[georgephillip]

Your belief that profits would have gone to wages is totally unfounded.

Between 2003 and 2012 stock buybacks comprised 54% of corporate profits which could have gone to higher wages or increased investment in plants and equipment or in public investment such as infrastructure, all of which would have increased consumer demand.
Billionaire Hanauer Hammers Stock Buybacks The Nader Page

 

[georgephillip]

On reason wages are staying down is the fact that we are importing all kinds of low wage competition. That includes competition for high tech jobs. There are millions of Indians working here on H1-Bs. These people depress the wages that technical people can earn.

That is one reason wages stay low.
Here's another:
"“Wal-Mart has spent [over ten years] more than$65.4 billion on stock buybacks — about 47 percent of its profits. That’s an average of more than $6.5 billion a year in stock buybacks, enough to give each of its 1.4 million U.S. workers a $4,670-a-year raise.

"It is also, coincidentally, an amount roughly equivalent to the estimated $6.2 billion Wal-Mart costs U.S. taxpayers every year in food stamps, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and other public assistance to its many impoverished employees.”
Billionaire Hanauer Hammers Stock Buybacks The Nader Page

 

[georgephillip]

It has nothing to do with corporate profits. Corporations have to pay according to the supply and demand for labor. Since the Democrats have been in charge of immigration the supply is greater than the demand.

Both Democrats and Republicans serve the same 1% of Americans, so why would you think Republicans would do anything to upset their corporate masters?

 

[georgephillip]

Free markets and ordinary law and orde

"Material non-public information" would fall under free markets or ordinary law and order?
"April 10 (Bloomberg) -- SAC Capital Advisors LP’s landmark $1.8 billion settlement of a U.S. government insider-trading probe stretching back to 2007 was approved by a federal judge, bringing to an end the hedge fund’s role as a money manager and capping a decade of insider-trading cases.

SAC Record 1.8 Billion Insider Plea Caps 7-Year Probe - Bloomberg Business

 

[georgephillip]

retty close. So you admit that we didn't have either Feudalism or anarchy.

Sure we did:
"We hear now on all sides the term 'robber barons' applied to some of the great capitalists. ... The old robber barons of the Middle Ages who plundered sword in hand and lance in rest were more honest than this new aristocracy of swindling millionaires.[1]
—Lida F. Baldwin, quoting the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writing in 1907 about how little business had changed in 35 years."
Robber baron industrialist - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[georgephillip]

the conservative/libertarian idea of our founders was that govt has been the greatest monopoly and as such the greatest source of evil in human history and so should be very very limited.

Is that why the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation?

 

[georgephillip]

AS I've said many times, my idea is to abolish the monopoly on the use of force.

You can find out how it would work here:

"More specifically, in order to be just and efficient, the production and maintenance of law will have to be undertaken by freely financed and competing individuals and agencies. How can this be done? While it is impossible to predict the precise shape and form that the 'security industry' would take within the framework of a private law society — just as it is impossible to predict the specific structure of almost any industry under such hitherto non-existing circumstances — a significant number of fundamental structural changes as compared to the status quo of state-provided security protection can be predicted."
"Freely financed individuals and agencies"???

Sounds like Somalia.

Mises Daily Mises Institute