Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Some things don't make sense: you can't have no regulations and unlimited lobbying, the whole purpose of lobbying is to create laws and regulation for all kind of interests. It is easy to have a very wrong idea of what free market means with such contradicted ideas in one's head.
Ideally you would have full free market, full freedom and full RESPONSIBILITY. Laissez-faire as Libertarians called it a long time ago. This would mean minarchism or even better anarcho-capitalism.
Actually, Liberal is supposed to mean Libertarian, I don't know how Americans wrecked the meaning of the word.
Yep, no government handing out goodies means no lobbying.
Corporation, company or individual, doesn't matter... There is always justice. One way or another. The harmed human will always seek revenge to be made whole.
I'm just saying, you read the OP as corporations wouldn't exist, and the OP explicitly stated a "corporate free-for-all". I don't know how you can read his post and conclude that in his proposed scenario that corporations wouldn't exist.
As for justice, one way or another. One of the hallmarks of a civilized society is that justice isn't "one way or another". I'm sorry, but I don't want to live in a society where lynching and mob justice is the prevalent "justice".
As for a 100% free market-----welcome to monopolies, and company towns where people don't make money, they just end up deeper and deeper in debt.
Since the OP posits no regulations, then the purpose of unions wouldn't be to lobby for regulations, they would be the means to organizing violence against business.
I don't know why anyone mentioned China in this thread, since China's government has the power to completely regulate business and trade. And Somalia isn't a valid comparison since it has never had the kind of commercial base that the United States has. But the idea of a robber baron society taken to a whole new level seems reasonable.
The problem with this analogy is that the internet is still heavily governed. Not directly, but indirectly. The laws of the land still apply. Monopolies are still against the law in the USA, but would not be in a free market. Drugs are still overseen by the FDA (perhaps not the most effective example), but would not be in a totally free market.
Monopolies can only exist with government protection. The free market is far better at preventing monopolies, but government steps in and typically prevents the little guy from giving the marketplace an alternative. Examples of maintained monopolies = utilities, examples of monopolies once protected but since opened up to competition = long distance and telecomm.
Everything else people think is a monopoly either isn't, or is and directly resulting from government protecting them.
Drugs are an even funnier example, because they help prove my stance rather than disprove it. In a free market, where drug companies have competition, who wins - the drug company that makes stuff that kills people, or the one who actually helps people? Do your customers wrong, and your competitor takes those customers from you. But the FDA is so onerous with regs that very few players exist in the drug market, and they pay huge sums of money to make sure the regulatory barrier keeps new competition from entering the marketplace. By doing so, they can withstand the 10-12 year process of bringing new drugs to the market, but no new competition can. Once again, the government creates and maintains the monopoly, and the monopoly pays well for them to do so. FFS, Mitt Romney may as well be a senior exec at Pfizer, and it's no shock how well they faired in the whole RomneyCare thing in MA.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Myghost
Perhaps the most compelling case:
Power Companies might be able to do their commerce on the internet, but if left to their governing, they would not be interested in protecting our environment. Look at Duke Power in NC, with the recent coal-ash spill. It still happened, but it would happen a lot more without regulatin.
BP Horizon?
Exxon Valdeze?
BoA Bogus Charges Scandals?
Insurance denial of coverage?
Building Codes?
Disclosure of Genetically Modified Foods?
etc.
etc.
etc.
These companies have no competition because they pay the government to regulate/legislate their competition out of existence. And in any endeavor, accidents happen. ~35,000 people die each year in automobile crashes, despite a few bazillion safety regs on the operators, manufacturers, road builders. You cannot legislate a perfectly safe anything.
In a world of more free markets and greater competition, bad corporate citizens who pollute, endanger, etc get crushed by competition and customers seeking a better alternative. Leviathan protects these bad actors you lost, and only makes a show of punishing them, when they actually reward them behind your back and keep them protected.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Myghost
All of that is partially kept in check by regulation. A free market might allow you to go online and complain about your power company polluting, but with the power that some companies can accumulate if unchecked, you could do nothing about it.
It's a mirage, a phantasm. It's kabuki theater all this regulation you think keeps you safe. Itr doesn't. It's bribes and extrotion rackets set up to keep you fooled and the big corporate cronies protected from competition. Oh yeah, the FDA wags a very stern finger at Pfizer, and then Romeny gives them RomneyCare, Obama/Pelosi/Reid give them ObamaCare, and the Supreme Court gives them Kelo v New London. Every now and then, they have to be made a scapegoat in the public eye, and behind the scenes, Leviathan is supplying hookers and blow for another shindig of corproate execs and the political weasel cronies.
You are not being protected by the regulatory state...you're being blinded and enslaved by it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Myghost
Mind you, I'm for a (mostly) free market, and do think we'd benefit from LESS regulation. But there is a balance, and the fact that about half the country thinks we need more regs, and the other half thinks we need less tells me that we are probably in the neighborhood of the right place....
If any of the nonsense you hurled at me represents your belief set, then you are not for a free market at all. You're for government oppression and the appearance that it's for your own good, or at the very least that a bunch of tyranny is OK with you so long as now and again someone richer than you gets hollered at in the public square.
For every dollar you think regulation saves you, cronyism, graft and racketeering by the political class behind your back costs you $2 more. In every one way you think you benefit, there are two ways you are harmed.
Who do you think bankrolls Leviathan's annual media blitzes on taking more control of the Internet? Hint - it isn't small companies who benefit from free markets.
I never claimed there was. Nowhere in any post I've ever written on any forum ever, matter of fact. Don't straw man me with an innuendo suggesting I am that ignorant.
Ah, a subscriber to yelp-sucks.com, I see. Thing is, in the 5 years that yelp-sucks.com has been trying to prove that Yelp is an extortion racket...they haven't been able to, and haven't heard of anyone who has. They filter reviews according to an algorithm. Caveat emptor.
And there you go... sold-out to Yelp business practices I see, and I suspect with ZERO observations to go with it. Merely a case of the ostrich syndrome? Sounds like that.
Quote:
When a company I do business with gives my information to someone else, chances are very good it was in the terms of service when I dealt with them. I then choose to deal with them or not based on knowing whether or not they will share my information with others. The government gives me no choice, they simply use force. There's a vast difference between the two.
And guess what, the terms of service are a result of regulations. And no matter how much you want to be delusional about your privacy, without legal bounds defined, you're going to have to deal with facts.
If there was no welfare of any kind, no regulations, unlimited lobbying - a complete, corporate free for all, what would America be like? Do you think the benefits would trickle down to the masses due to limits being lifted on the innovation and entrepreneurship from great minds like Steve Wozniak, Miley Cyrus, and the Waltons, or would America turn into a plutocratic third world hell hole?
By free market, do you mean a market where the government isn't involved at all? It seems like you do, and if that's the case, you're wrong about a 'corporate free for all.' Corporations wouldn't exist in a completely free market. Corporations are validated by the state; at one point in history, the government would only sign off on a corporation to last a few decades. Corporations were originally intended to expire (well, actually, if you go back far enough, they weren't intended to exist at all).
And if that were the case, things may not be so bad. It's hard to tell. You'd have to go back really far to change that, and at that point, what life would be like is too speculative.
If corporations are allowed to exist (which would then not be a genuinely free market), then things wouldn't be that different. A slightly more poverty stricken version that what we have now, probably.
As a rule, less regulation is good, but no regulation is awful. There needs to be restrictions on what can and can't be done, especially when it comes to lobbying, which shouldn't be allowed at all.
Monopolies can only exist with government protection. The free market is far better at preventing monopolies, but government steps in and typically prevents the little guy from giving the marketplace an alternative. Examples of maintained monopolies = utilities, examples of monopolies once protected but since opened up to competition = long distance and telecomm.
Everything else people think is a monopoly either isn't, or is and directly resulting from government protecting them.
Drugs are an even funnier example, because they help prove my stance rather than disprove it. In a free market, where drug companies have competition, who wins - the drug company that makes stuff that kills people, or the one who actually helps people? Do your customers wrong, and your competitor takes those customers from you. But the FDA is so onerous with regs that very few players exist in the drug market, and they pay huge sums of money to make sure the regulatory barrier keeps new competition from entering the marketplace. By doing so, they can withstand the 10-12 year process of bringing new drugs to the market, but no new competition can. Once again, the government creates and maintains the monopoly, and the monopoly pays well for them to do so. FFS, Mitt Romney may as well be a senior exec at Pfizer, and it's no shock how well they faired in the whole RomneyCare thing in MA.
These companies have no competition because they pay the government to regulate/legislate their competition out of existence. And in any endeavor, accidents happen. ~35,000 people die each year in automobile crashes, despite a few bazillion safety regs on the operators, manufacturers, road builders. You cannot legislate a perfectly safe anything.
In a world of more free markets and greater competition, bad corporate citizens who pollute, endanger, etc get crushed by competition and customers seeking a better alternative. Leviathan protects these bad actors you lost, and only makes a show of punishing them, when they actually reward them behind your back and keep them protected.
It's a mirage, a phantasm. It's kabuki theater all this regulation you think keeps you safe. Itr doesn't. It's bribes and extrotion rackets set up to keep you fooled and the big corporate cronies protected from competition. Oh yeah, the FDA wags a very stern finger at Pfizer, and then Romeny gives them RomneyCare, Obama/Pelosi/Reid give them ObamaCare, and the Supreme Court gives them Kelo v New London. Every now and then, they have to be made a scapegoat in the public eye, and behind the scenes, Leviathan is supplying hookers and blow for another shindig of corproate execs and the political weasel cronies.
You are not being protected by the regulatory state...you're being blinded and enslaved by it.
If any of the nonsense you hurled at me represents your belief set, then you are not for a free market at all. You're for government oppression and the appearance that it's for your own good, or at the very least that a bunch of tyranny is OK with you so long as now and again someone richer than you gets hollered at in the public square.
For every dollar you think regulation saves you, cronyism, graft and racketeering by the political class behind your back costs you $2 more. In every one way you think you benefit, there are two ways you are harmed.
Who do you think bankrolls Leviathan's annual media blitzes on taking more control of the Internet? Hint - it isn't small companies who benefit from free markets.
Governments break up monopolies. Like when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the market on silver a few decades ago. Monopolies have the money and resources to destroy their competition. And if you think a company like Standard Oil didn't have the money and resources to destroy their competition then you don't understand the power these companies wielded. Corporations will also ally themselves with similar companies to limit competition, particularly small companies wanting to horn in on the business. Cartel.
No regulations means that the companies with the most money and resources can do whatever they want to destroy competition. No government needed.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
