From 1999, the linked article seems an interesting read on the intersection between 'hacker culture' and the libertarian project; dry and a little quaint.
Readers might like to compare the more journalistic (and entertaining, IMO) 2014 piece on 'San Francisco’s tech-libertarian “Reboot” conference' from sadly defunct Pando, for example:
> At first glance it makes no sense to front a rabidly anti-gay candidate like McMorris Rodgers to sell the Kochs’ and the Paul family’s scrubland libertarianism to a Bay Area audience full of hip disruptors and “anarchist” practitioners of bohemia grooming fads.
> But that’s because what Silicon Valley folks think of when they hear the word “libertarianism” actually has very little connection to what the libertarian movement actually stands for, and has stood for since the 1970s.
The libertarianism the article speaks of at the end gave way to right-wing populism, while Silicon Valley moved into mixture of hard capitalism and social justice (dodging taxes and monopolizing while showing pride flags)
I think this utopian techno-libertarian is more like a relic from the 90s nowadays.
edit: on the other hand… it gave rise to bitcoin/cryptocurrency, which is like the culmination of both techno-utopianism and libertarianism. So, maybe you are right
I miss the "utopian techno-libertarian". There was a time in the 90's where I think a lot of people did believe they would change the world for the better. Who knew the old paradigms would still win in the end, the rich took the spoils, and the technology was subverted.
The One, also known as the Prime Program, is a systemic feature of the Matrix wherein a special code is carried by a randomly selected human being. This person is then gifted vast superhuman abilities as an avatar within the Matrix, which sometimes manifests as extraordinary powers in the real world. The special code has the function to collectively attach, to the person that carries it, all of the anomalies which emanate from the few humans who continue to reject the Matrix. This essentially makes The One an "Integral Anomaly" or the SUM of all anomalies.
The mechanisms by which The One appears are rather simple and arranged in the Prime Program process: when the anomalies in the Matrix reach a certain threshold and begin to pose serious problems, a random human is selected by the machines to be born with a special code (the Integral Anomaly) that, as said before, ties and attaches all of the anomalies within the Matrix to the programming of this human. The Oracle, who is aware of The One's existence and purpose because it is her duty to guide humanity to find The One, will enlighten him to his true nature and lead him towards the Source where he fulfills his purpose of reinserting the Prime Program and resetting the Matrix. She does this by predicting the return of The One to the people of Zion to aid them in freeing humanity from the Machines' grip. The Architect, as creator of the Matrix, is also well aware of The One's existence and purpose, referring to The One as an "eventuality".
Yes that is exactly how it works, there's a lot of literature on the subject. Any genuinely transgressive movement has its aesthetics, but not necessarily its values, repackaged as a consumer identification and subsumed into the mainstream of the culture.
Grunge is a good example but the same thing happened to punk a generation earlier. Consciousness-raising sessions and second wave feminism quickly became unilever marketing cosmetic products using the language of empowerment. Pride was originally the first anniversary of a riot but now JP Morgan and the cops themselves are comfortable putting out a rainbow float. etc etc etc there are thousands of examples.
Anything that's visually recognizable as transgression will be commoditized until it's no longer transgressive. Many many cultural and art phenomena are downstream of and in response to this mechanic of consumer capitalism.
I'm gonna say punk's the odd one out there, because Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were there at the heart of it with SEX right from the get-go. So the time-to-commercialization on that one might actually be zero, or possibly negative, which gives it a slightly different character.
(I can see the other point of view, which is that Westwood was a nobody until consumerism took her and her designs to its bosom).
Everyone knew the old paradigms would still win in the end. The master’s tools will not destroy the master’s house, after all. But the people made (more) wealthy and powerful by the old paradigms had a lot of incentive to pretend otherwise.
Not everyone knew. I was young and naive and bought into it. I was so doe-eyed innocent I didn't even realize there were old masters to watch out for. Of course we're going to change the world. - Guess this plays out in every generation, you need a big population of young and innocent that can be taken advantage of to keep the system running. Moloch marches on.
I have noticed that people on HN tend to equate neoliberalism with classical liberalism, being clueless about the difference.
Classical liberalism was a naturalistic belief in market supremacy, understood to be a colossal failure by the middle of the 20th century. It was associated with the Gilded Age, which spawned the so-called Progressive Era, the ideological camps that followed, and the catastrophe that was the world wars.
Neoliberalism is what the capitalist class have insisted is a reformed liberalism, invincible to the problems that classical liberalism motivated.
It is a far more centralized, 'managed' market supremacy without the naturalistic perspective. Neoliberalism claims to acknowledge that markets are not natural and must be tightly managed by experts.
I don't understand the classical liberalism part. How do a bunch of empires, that don't operate on market principles, going to war with each other show that classical liberalism is a 'colossal failure'?
Not an expert, but if you read any of Keynes, he's basically critiquing classical economics and pointing out some of the ways it fails to explain economic cycles, hence the invention of macroeconomics.
Really? Classical liberal economics fails to explain business cycles? Then why is the Austrian School (dyed in the wool classical liberals) the only major economic faction that's developed the most comprehensive expose on how central banks cause malinvestment, booms and busts by fiddling with the money supply?
I don't think most Austrian econmists would self-identify as neoliberals. Politically they tend to be Libertarians (in the U.S.) or free market anarchists or minarchists (or I suppose laissez faire). Basically free-market instead of stat interventions. I belive most neoliberals quite readily accept state interventions, central banking etc.
The core tenent is that the free market is the best allocator of factors of production and entrepreneurial profit is the guiding factor. The state tends to interfere with this. It's best summarized in the socialist calculation debate.
However, there's also basically a split (mostly reconciled these days) betwen a more Hayekian wing which is more accepting of the mainstream (and could possibly self-identify as neoliberals) and the state in general and a wing that is more in the spirit of von Mises.
Disclaimer: just interested in the history of economics, not an economist.
You're a bit mistaken. Austrians are basically anti-statists who believe in limited government and non-intervention in the market - even to the point of opposing legal tender laws.
Keynes has to be THE most confusing and self-contradictory personality in orthodox economics. He had no original insights and the only reason political elites took a liking to him was because he gave them a logical, complicated copout for money printer to go brrrrrrr. He frequently changed his theories and ideas for political expediency and the idea that modern 'economists' take his teaching as gospel truth is just sad.
Murray Rothbard wrote an entire profile on the man [0] and I'd suggest anybody taking a stab at heterodox economics to read it.
I'd rather have some Keynes than get pissed on with some 'trickle down' economics.
I would say, I'd bet nobody having an argument about economics here has actually read much Keynes, or anything about classical/neo-liberalism. It all just turns into "I recognize some word related to the right, so I'll virtue signal and keep hyping it." Or more, "I see a free market economy argument happening, I must jump in and comment because markets are from God and I must support".
When dealing with Marxist or Keynsians (or modern monetary theorists for that matter) it is a safe bet that the people implementing the policies haven't read and don't intend to follow the theory.
So I am simultaneously shy of saying "Kaynes was wrong" and confident that anyone claiming "Kaynes was right and we must do suchandsuch!" is saying the wrong thing. Ditto the other theories.
I believe the case against classical liberal economics has more to do with the economic crises of the late 19th century and specially the Great Depression than with the wars.
Nope. The Great Depression doesn't indict classical liberal economics - the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. When the bankers started calling in their loans, everyone went bust.
That'd be equivalent to grow America's M2 ($20 trillion) by 12 trillion in just 4 years. 2019 to 2022 wasn't even that intense and, well, we can see how ugly things have gotten.
Bankers don't usually start calling in loans when there's too much money, but rather when there's too little. So I think your explanation needs a few more causal steps.
Looking at charts of the US gold supply it seems to have grown fairly significantly in the early 1900s up to the great depression, and seems to have been more than the 60% cited for money supply growth.
The same reason Nixon had to take the U.S off the gold standard in 1971 - the government printed more dollars than it had gold to back. Just because you have a gold standard won't stop politicians from printing cash when they need it.
The only way to stop politicians meddling with money is to denationalize it and eliminate legal tender laws.
it was more than just a discontent with liberalism, it was also discontent with communism -- an attempt to find a 3rd way / fuse them.
the ruthless capitalist approach led to the development of communism as a reaction. but communism had its own faults and, to many, egregious failures as well.
Mussolini -- who was literally the editor of a socialist newspaper -- grew disillusioned with socialism, and proposed a 3rd way by mixing chunks of capitalism that he liked with the chunks of communism that he liked, as well as a good healthy dose of machismo and nationalism to paper over the gaps.
similar approaches were taken in Germany, and there was a Nationalist (right wing) Workers Party (left wing) called the NSDAP that tried to do the same thing. Instead of pure corporatism they made it ethnic, but had vaguely similar approaches to corporations and the state, which often meant whatever they felt like at the time.
Wasn't there a big move to tearing down [0] statues [1] because the classical liberals [2] were considered monsters from a different era? Classical liberalism does really poorly under the current progressive zeitgeist and would likely and ironically be labelled "racist white man logic". The strongest thing protecting the classic liberal thinkers from being tarred and feathered is nobody knows who they are.
I don't think the alt right can be said to have "claimed" it as much as the left is rejecting it and there is no other home in a 2-faction classification.
Also, we do not live in a progressive zeitgeist. That is only the narrative. If you look at what is happening instead of what is being said, then not much is progressive or leftist about it. There is some pushing of individualistic identity politics.
But these are not used to emancipate a class. They are used to create a new elite, that is "empathic". They are not talking about righting wrongs of poor people.
I always forget this, but yeah, I think you are right.
Prime example for me were those talks about rail worker strikes. They were completely disallowed from happening. I understand the reasons, but despite not being any sort of leftist, I find it quite unfair that rail workers can't strike.
Police, teachers, actors and writers, etc. all have that right. Rail workers? Nope. I don't know what to call the political economic system we live under, but it seems to just be that our leaders make it up as we go along and allow whatever happens to be convenient and not blatantly illegal. Nobody gives a shit about rail workers, so legally blocking a strike by them isn't going to cause any problems.
a bunch of overzealous students putting paint on one statue of voltaire is hardly a "big move".. voltaire, his ideas and his works are still at the centre of french culture, politics and curricula
If the fringe left are throwing paint on him and the fringe right are saying "we want to be like him!" then I put it to you that the situation is that the left fringe doesn't like classical liberalism.
It isn't that the meaning of the word is changing. There is a detectable (indeed, proud and vocal) anti-liberalism stripe in the people who most loudly disagree with Carl Benjamin. And a lot of his positions are classical liberal positions. The classical liberals wouldn't have been very impressed by the things he criticises (or him, one suspects, but ones character is different from ones political persuasion).
People on the right might be picking these classical liberals for their 'team', but it is probably because they only have the same cursory knowledge of them as they have of the bible. They just believe in a veneer of some simple concepts that they have been spoon fed through commercial marketing. They don't really know what they believe, what is in the bible, and really not what some classical liberal might have said and how it applies to them.
Industrialization was a massive success, but classical liberalism had to be reined in by governments and unions. We as a society succeeded despite it. The peons had to get gunned down by the Pinkertons so we could get sane working hours, conditions, and fair pay. Thank god for the weekend? No, thank unions.
I have this feeling folks learn about the invisible hand from Adam Smith, take nothing else from that text, and then have this magical thinking that benefits will accrue to everyone, when in fact we little people have to prevent that invisible hand from stabbing innocent people by creating the FDA, EPA, OSHA, FCC, FTC, SEC, NLRB, etc., and we have to have labor movements to get some of benefits of industrialization.
Right now, our approach to life is to motivate everyone by profit, reducing fully-fleshed people to homo economicus, devoid of any other emotion and motivation other than money, and hope that somehow, magically, that will create the best civilization.
Industrialization happened first and fastest in places that adhered to classical liberal values.
And after industrialization, over the course of the 20th century, the most free market economies again saw the greatest gains per capita income and quality of life.
>>The peons had to get gunned down by the Pinkertons so we could get sane working hours, conditions, and fair pay. Thank god for the weekend? No, thank unions.
The unions murdered workers that crossed the picket line, or "scabs" as the socialists called them. Pinkertons were sent in to remove these violent illegal blockaders.
Once the unions succeeded in their cause, with exactly the kind of false narratives you're putting forth here, industrial expansion slowed, and eventually we entered into the current era of stagnation.
Case in point: Detroit. Detroit was the wealthiest city in the US in 1950, with the highest per capita GDP in the country. Over the course of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the UAW union took over, with membership eventually peaking in 1978.
What followed was industrial collapse, and eventually, Detroit becoming a ghost town.
Unions are not good for labor at large, just the labor that is on the winning side of the zero sum rent extraction scheme.
I think you are making the same mistake, or 'conflating' ideas as many, by mixing 'Classical-Liberal' and 'Neo-Liberal', and just seeing the word 'market' and automatically assuming it is good. That 'market' economies are best, and 'classical' says the market is good, so it is good. But 'new-liberal' didn't say markets 'bad', just that they need to be managed.
A century of scholarship says markets are good. This isn't some ideological narrative. It's an evidenced based conclusion, and the consensus position of the social scientists who study this.
Sure. But you can't just see any economic theory that has the word 'market' in it and automatically say they are equal and good. Which is the current 'ideology'.
I'd also question a 'century' of 'proving it is great' since 100 years is 1923, so any proof at that point was just leading into Depression.
And, YES, in the modern American dialog, 'Free Market' is definitely an ideology. People believe in it without any knowledge about what it means, similarly to the bible.
I never implied any term with the word "market" is good. And of course most people are going to only have a simplistic understanding of most concepts. But the reason the free market was popularized in the first place is that people who study economics found that it produced prosperity, and then actively popularized the idea of a free market.
Of course, they were massively out-propagandized by special interests who benefit from government restrictions on voluntary interactions, and so the free market is extremely unpopular, with all trends —
e.g. the rising degree of regulatory of centralization as measured by per capita regulatory compliance costs, the rapid rise in social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since 1950, etc — demonstrating that.
>>since 100 years is 1923, so any proof at that point was just leading into Depression.
The Federal Reserve, i.e. the central bank, created the Crash of 1929, and it was Hoover and FDR's government "cures" that turned what would have been a short downturn and quick recovery into a Depression.
The FDR administration, economically illiterate ideologues as they were, believed that the problem was low prices, and that by reducing the supply of agricultural products, they could push up the price, and end the depression.
In reality, the money supply had contracted due to cascading loan defaults, and what needed to happen is for prices to adjust downward to come in line with wages.
The FDR administration instituted a number of measures to try to control prices, to horrible effect on millions.
I didn't know about the pigs. That was interesting.
I've never understood paying farmers to not produce. But, it still happens today. Through decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, we still pay farmers to not produce. And we pay oil companies welfare, not sure why we pay them anything. The government is always trying to balance the economy and subsidize some industries more than others (again, the gray area on which is the right thing to subsidize).
Not sure we are dissagreeing. You don't seem to be against regulations on a market in general, just not these regulations. Markets are artificial to begin with, there is no such thing as a 'free market' without some organizing effort that people call 'regulations'. How free does it have to be, in 1900's there were private armies, do we go back to that much freedom.
I tend to think the Gov should step in on in-elastic markets. Sure, 'free markets' are great when there is competition for something like a TV. But not great when there is a monopoly on insulin.
That is why health care free markets don't work. When you are having a heart attach you aren't shopping around for a bargain price.
Anyway, I think we diverged a lot from original post. I don't necessarily disagree with 'classical' economics. But those are a long way from modern right wing propaganda on 'free markets' which I thought the thread had gone to. So when someone suddenly starts talking about real 'markets', have to re-calibrate.
I'm against all regulations that impact mutually voluntary economic interactions between consenting adults (so every regulation with the exception of those relating to interactions with minors and the environment), so I believe we are disagreeing. I fully support targeted government intervention that does not violate the freedom to contract, i.e. is not a regulation, to produce public goods. Where we agree is that we both believe that some level of government intervention is required for optimal economic function. I just restrict the type of government intervention that I support to types that don't suppress the free market.
Yes, markets are artificial, in the same way that a peaceful society where murder is prohibited is artificial. Doesn't mean they are not beneficial.
>>That is why health care free markets don't work. When you are having a heart attach you aren't shopping around for a bargain price.
Emergency care is a small subset of healthcare spending, that should be government provided. The rest is far better provided by a free market. The example of the cosmetic procedures industry, and how it vastly outperforms the healthcare industry with the advantage of being more market based than the latter, shows how beneficial market freedom is:
In this "regulations that impact mutually voluntary economic interactions between consenting adults".
I think you are missing the part where there are very few interactions between individuals. Since the corporation was granted person hood, and the bulk of all interactions are really between consenting corporations, actual real humans are left out. If me a human individual consents to interact with a corporation that is also a consenting person, it isn't really equal, or free. The corporation can do a number of things, like swamping the human with legal costs, non-stop lawsuits. Or on grander schemes, maybe the corporation can buy up all the food or land in an area, and force a population to capitulate and come to terms with whatever advantageous agreement the corporation desires.
Your view of the individual, while romantically desirable. I can't argue against it, it sounds nice. It doesn't actually work in practice, because the free market is NOT made up of 'consenting adults'. It is made up giant constructs, and humans under duress, forced to make due to survive. And when it gets bad enough, the humans take their 'freedom' and rise up to protest, and society either collapses or maybe some half measure like unions is the outcome.
>I think you are missing the part where there are very few interactions between individuals. Since the corporation was granted person hood, and the bulk of all interactions are really between consenting corporations, actual real humans are left out.
You can't use mental gymnastics to justify regulations. Corporations are just legal arrangements between individuals. There is a chain of voluntary interactions linking the shareholders to any action the corporation takes. To restrict corporate behavior is to restrict the right of people to coordinate their actions through legal arrangements like corporations.
>The corporation can do a number of things, like swamping the human with legal costs, non-stop lawsuits.
If powerful entities, whether people acting collectively as corporations, or just wealthy individuals, are able to do this, then that is a problem with the legal system, and the solution should be targeted at fixing that problem.
These problems should not be used as an excuse to create laws that violate the right to freely contract. In practice, these laws and the principles behind them end up being used by the same corporations that you've turned into your bogeyman, to massively exploit the population.
That is all very semi-mathematically correct, in the utopia of economics text books with all individuals are rational with equal with perfect knowledge and resources.
What actually happens in practice, humans are not rational, they have to eat, and all decisions are compromised. Corporations are a group of individuals, but I've seen plenty of middle managers, that have to hit their numbers, are feeling the pressure, and they will definitely break laws, dump waste, take advantage of underlings. And, the underlings, they have bills, have to eat, they go along with it. It is pressure all the way down through the organization, nobody is free to make 'contracts' between individuals. There are no free decisions.
Guess overall, think you are missing the the power dynamic and how that plays out in groups. LOL - Groups of monkeys.
I agree that these are all problems, but again, I think the solution is to focus on fixing those problems directly, and not let special interests use these problems as the pretense for imposing their long-desired restrictions on the free market.
Here is something with some more modern, current examples in technology, might help understand the nuances in 'free markets'. Nobody is saying abolish property, but 'free' doesn't mean chaos mode anarchy.
First, I should point out that every party that was involved in the publication of the article has a financial conflict of interest in the public's perception of the free market. The journalist is unionized, and thus benefits from the barriers to competition from other workers created by left-wing labor laws that restrict his employer's right to freely contract, and negotiate with workers outside of the union.
Unionized journalists not disclosing that they're unionized —and thus that they have a financial conflict of interest when doing economics/politics stories— is a major problem as virtually the entire mainstream media has a unionized workforce, and most people —I presume until I informed you of this, you included— are oblivious to it.
The researchers formerly worked for the government, and have expertise relevant to jobs in the regulatory sector of the government. They stand to directly benefit from any expansion in public funds allocated for regulatory agencies.
Moving on, even assuming this article's claims are correct, classical economics already recognizes that there are edge cases where a free market without government intervention is not absolutely optimal, so this doesn't invalidate it.
And even in these cases, the inefficiencies created by natural monopolies can be addressed without suppressing the free market, via government subsidizing the development of decentralized open-source protocols that are capable of entirely replacing centralized parties in many markets. The state, being publicly funded, is the only entity capable of cost-effectively funding non-profit initiatives like this that produce public goods.
Finally, the common characterization of a free market "anarchy" is nothing more than propaganda to vilify a free society. Laws, enforced by the state, that respect and protect the right of consenting adults to engage in mutually voluntary interactions is the opposite of anarchy. It is a peaceful well-ordered society. The government, when misused, becomes an instrument of predation, as Frédéric Bastiat explained some over 170 years ago:
"Man rejects Pain and Suffering. And yet he is condemned by nature to the Suffering privation brings if he does not embark upon the Pain of Work. All he has, therefore, is a choice between these two evils. How can he avoid both? Up to now, he has only found and will only ever find one means, that is, to enjoy the work of others, to act in such a way that Pain and Satisfaction do not accrue to each person in accordance with natural proportions, but that all pain accrues to some and all satisfaction to the others. From this we get slavery or even spoliation, in whatever form it takes: wars, imposture, violence, restrictions, fraud, etc., all monstrous forms of abuse but in line with the thought that has given rise to them. We should hate and combat oppressors but we cannot say that they are absurd.
Slavery is receding, thank Heaven, and on the other hand, our aptitude for defending our property means that direct and crude Spoliation is not easy to do. However, one thing has remained. It is this unfortunate primitive tendency within all men to divide into two our complex human lot, shifting Pain onto others and keeping Satisfaction for themselves. It remains to be seen in what new form this sorry tendency will manifest itself.
Oppressors no longer act directly on the oppressed using their own forces. No, our conscience has become too scrupulous for that. There are still tyrants and victims certainly, but between them has placed itself the intermediary that is the State, that is to say, the law itself. What is more calculated to silence our scruples and, perhaps more appealing, to overcome our resistance? For this reason, we all make calls upon the State on one ground or pretext or another. We tell it “I do not consider that there is a satisfactory relation between the goods I enjoy and my work. I would like to take a little from the property of others to establish the balance I desire. But this is dangerous. Can you not make my task easier? Could you not provide me with a good position? Or else hinder the production of my competitors? Or else make me an interest free loan of the capital you have taken from its owners? Or raise my children at public expense? Or award me subsidies by way of subornation? Or ensure my well-being when I reach the age of fifty? By these means I will achieve my aim with a perfectly clear conscience, since the law itself will have acted on my behalf and I will achieve all the advantages of spoliation without ever having incurred either its risks or opprobrium!"
Sounds like you understand and agree that markets need some regulation ('edge case' being the debated gray area).
And you are ok with Governments stepping in to prop up competition to Monopolies. Guess that is a different way of doing it. Instead of breaking up monopolies to foster competition, seems you are arguing that it is better to allow monopolies to exist (to be free to do what they want), but to help keep a free market the government can step in and support their competitors until they can compete? Not sure how well that would work in practice. I think when the US had had the stomach to break up monopolies it has worked out better for the free market, because it keeps competition. I don't think AT&T and Standard Oil would have been taken down by more efficient rivals. That is the entire problem with monopolies, they don't have to be efficient.
Also, whatever your opinion about modern Unions. The Free Market created Unions. If workers could actually compete for fair wages, their wouldn't be the need for unions. Workers were living in squalor in factory towns as slaves. Unions arose to fight for safer conditions, less child labor, and pay. When a few humans come together and form a company it is ok? But humans come together to form a union it is bad? What if a group of people came together to call themselves a 'consulting firm', and hired out their labor? Would that be more appetizing? So have labor firms, that are companies, that could negotiate working rates and supply labor? Would that side step calling it a 'union' even if it could do all the same things.
I really don't get the backlash to unions. Almost all of the 'freedom's people take for granted today were from unions fighting for them. Weekends? 40 hour weeks? Vacation? Do you think the free market would have provided those? The free market treats humans as cattle.
>>And you are ok with Governments stepping in to prop up competition to Monopolies. Guess that is a different way of doing it. Instead of breaking up monopolies to foster competition, seems you are arguing that it is better to allow monopolies to exist (to be free to do what they want), but to help keep a free market the government can step in and support their competitors until they can compete? Not sure how well that would work in practice. I think when the US had had the stomach to break up monopolies it has worked out better for the free market, because it keeps competition. I don't think AT&T and Standard Oil would have been taken down by more efficient rivals. That is the entire problem with monopolies, they don't have to be efficient.
Yes, I want the government to prop up competition to monopolistic entities, and I want that competition to become the new monopolist. The difference would be that that government-propped-up competition would be an open standard or a decentralized protocol —think TCP/IP, or a public blockchain— that doesn't require active management by the state. Once it has become the market standard, it is self-sustaining, and more efficient than any private company would be in that role, since it doesn't have a proprietor that would abuse its monopolistic position to extract economic rent.
>>The Free Market created Unions. If workers could actually compete for fair wages, their wouldn't be the need for unions.
Absolute nonsense. The "free market" doesn't create laws that make it illegal for an employer to refuse to employ unionized or striking workers. Greedy humans, who have no respect for the free market, do. And yes, people can convince themselves that they're being treated unfairly, and that they are entitled to use the state's apparatus of violence to restrict their fellow man's freedom to contract, for reasons of greed. Just because they're workers, doesn't mean their grievances are automatically legitimate.
>>Almost all of the 'freedom's people take for granted today were from unions fighting for them. Weekends? 40 hour weeks? Vacation? Do you think the free market would have provided those? The free market treats humans as cattle.
Unions destroyed or severely handicapped nearly every industry they took control of. The mandated benefits they encouraged to be imposed are immoral, in restricting the freedom of contract. As for improving work conditions and wages, that was already happening —and at an even faster pace— before industry was captured by unions.
Detroit had the highest capita GDP in the US in 1950, and that prosperity emerged over the course over several decades where unions were a non-factor in the auto industry. 50 years after the UAW took over the US auto industry, and Detroit was a ghost town.
If humans want to get paid, then they are greedy? But if a corporation is greedy it is good? Why the dichotomy? Why should someone agree to less pay, because of a belief in the free market? That sounds kind of religious. Warship the free market to such a degree to be willingly take a lower wage to keep the system working? How is that itself free? Why can't humans through "mutually voluntary economic interactions between consenting adults" form a coalition (or company) to enter into a contract to supply labor to another company? It is not a 'free market' if it is only 'free' for some people and not others.
I meant the free market created unions, by forcing humans to group together for self preservation. Remember, at that time corporations hired private armies (Pinkertons), to kill anyone that protested low wages or working conditions. The Government did not step in and create unions, people were being killed and the Government stepped in to protect them.
I'm not arguing for socialism, I'm assuming you would call unions socialist, and there is a wide field of study that unfettered free markets lead to socialism. Mostly because the population becomes so poor the government has to step in to prop up the workers so they can eat, which is really supporting the corporations since the corporation then does not have to cover all the wage. Welfare programs are in essence, providing the 'difference', that the corporations should be paying. If 'Free Markets' worked, then corporations should actually be paying higher wages.
(https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-...
(https://newpolity.com/blog/capitalism-produces-socialism)
But, it is complicated and has changed over time. Unions also grew, became bureaucratic, and corrupt. Generally they also became calcified and hindered progress. So there are examples of this I agree with, mostly when technology changes, and then union laws didn't keep up. ( I think Train Unions were biggest example I think, as train technology advanced, the rules about staffing didn't keep up and did cause huge inefficient overhead).
Anecdotally, I have worked in Union plants, and Non-Union. I've seen union plant employees being very engaged and driving efficiency, and I've seen non-union (hence supposedly free and more incentivized by pay) beat down, insolent and checked out. My overall impression was that when humans are living in fear and can be fired for looking at the boss wrong, then they are not the most productive. This mentality only works for the most manual labor industries where humans are just muscle.
Your views on monopolies are different. I can't imagine there are 'free market' activist that would agree that propping up competitors to monopolies is better than splitting up monopolies. That sounds like something, that if tried, would be called 'government interference'. But, it is interesting idea.
Not sure this standards approach would work with all industries, especially those that require large capital investment.
I guess you would be ok with something like the Government making a law to force MS Xbox and Sony PlayStation to have open protocols so games could be played across platforms? I think that sounds interesting, but also think all the 'free market' activists would come up with some reason why that is government interference.
I am sympathetic with this idea. High Definition TV's were successful in large part because of government enforced standards, so that all companies equipment could interoperate. I also remember it was the 'free market' side that opposed those standards because they would 'be too expensive and bankrupt small business'.
Just seems like these free market arguments just move around depending on what the current entrenched companies need to survive.
>If humans want to get paid, then they are greedy? But if a corporation is greedy it is good? Why the dichotomy?
Both are greedy, and people in both sectors will happily convince the population to institute anti-free-market laws that give themselves a monopoly if we let them. That's what we let the unions do, when we passed laws making it illegal for employers refuse to employ unionized workers, or to negotiate with anyone outside of one once one emerges in their workforce and demands collective bargaining.
>I meant the free market created unions, by forcing humans to group together for self preservation.
Wages were rising at a rapid rate in the late 1800s, before unionization rates became significant, so no, the evidence clearly debunks your claim that the free market was harming workers. Unions were formed out of greed.
>Anecdotally, I have worked in Union plants, and Non-Union. I've seen union plant employees being very engaged and driving efficiency, and I've seen non-union (hence supposedly free and more incentivized by pay) beat down, insolent and checked out.
Anecdotally, I always hear the exact opposite from people who've experienced working in both environments.
>I guess you would be ok with something like the Government making a law to force MS Xbox and Sony PlayStation to have open protocols so games could be played across platforms?
Government does not have a right to use the threat of violence to compel people who are not defrauding or assaulting anyone to act a certain way, so no I would absolutely not be okay with it.
As I keep saying, I totally oppose regulations that violate the right of consenting adults to engage in mutually voluntary interactions. Offering a game system using a particular protocol is a mutually voluntary interaction and there can be no justification for prohibiting it.
I would support the government funding an open game system standard that various manufacturers would then choose to voluntarily adopt because of the technical superiority of that standard, or even purchases by the government from manufacturers adhering to it.
Got it. I miss-read your thoughts on open standards. So don't require corps to use open standards. But have government develop their own open standards and releasing it.
Still think it is a tall order to have wide adoptions of standards without a little bit of a 'stick'. High Definitions TV's wouldn't exist if the government hadn't mandated the change to that standard. A lot of companies resisted it.
Except for a few utopian cases like TCP/IP, I'd be hard pressed to think of any 'standard' that grew on its own without some enforcement.
Government can subsidize adoption of open standards until they've become the market standard. Even this clunky solution is better than the government assuming a right to interfere with how people use their own private property in mutually voluntary interactions.
The point is, China's economic development massively accelerated once it massively moved toward the direction of market economies. They still have significant centralization, which is why they will likely reach a ceiling on their productivity, after which growth will be much more tepid, but the point stands.
It seems much more likely that they were benefiting from the catch up factor, as all the low-hanging fruit for raising productivity could be picked in the wake of a large scale roll back of communist restrictions that had been in place for 30 years.
> A new underclass of people was formed, living hand to mouth in very precarious conditions.
That underclass already existed, it's just that dirt-poor subsistence farmers spread all over the countryside are much less visible than dirt-poor factory workers in cities. There's a reason why people moved to cities, despite the horrible working conditions
Which metrics are more important than overall economic progress causing median improvement in important metrics (healthy lifespan, childhood nutrition, early morbidity, etc.)? To rephrase, who cares if rich people are astronomically richer while everyone's lives are improving?
All culture is a lie that only persists in the re-telling. There is no such thing as America or Russia - these things exist merely as a facsimile created in the minds of humans, who must perpetuate the concept by re-telling the lie, lest it fade out of human consciousness into the oblivion of history.
Computers merely allow us to lie - and forget the lies - at light speed. This will eventually replace all other cultures - neoliberalism especially ...
It’s amazing to me people agree on definitions for anything, given people have been having the same basic abstract arguments for what makes thing A thing A and distinct from thing B for thousands of years.
People don't like to be confronted with the reality of their own lives' utter fallacy. We all participate in these fallacies, it is very hard to extract our own personal identity from them once we have spent decades supporting the fallacy.
It only takes a few days in the bush, out back, to realize just how futile it is to consider any one culture superior to another...
Readers might like to compare the more journalistic (and entertaining, IMO) 2014 piece on 'San Francisco’s tech-libertarian “Reboot” conference' from sadly defunct Pando, for example:
> At first glance it makes no sense to front a rabidly anti-gay candidate like McMorris Rodgers to sell the Kochs’ and the Paul family’s scrubland libertarianism to a Bay Area audience full of hip disruptors and “anarchist” practitioners of bohemia grooming fads.
> But that’s because what Silicon Valley folks think of when they hear the word “libertarianism” actually has very little connection to what the libertarian movement actually stands for, and has stood for since the 1970s.
...
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20141118174216/http://pando.com/...