It's absolutely comical to me how politicians will tote the values of a capitalistic society, then turn around and get on their knees for special interest lobbies.
This is only a contradiction if you view the government as some sort of impartial referee in the game of capitalism. If instead you rightly view them as the biggest player on the field that bullies everyone else and picks favourites then there is no contradiction.
The government isn't just a normal player on the field that happens to be bigger and stronger. Government also enjoys the acceptance by society that it is the only actor with certain authorities, like the authority to mediate conflict with violence, imprison and execute people, break up companies or prevent mergers by force, and fund itself via taxation. If a "normal" organization did any of those things, you would probably resist, and your neighbors would probably take your side.
Could we please stop conflating the military and use of it by the government to laws that were enacted long ago to protect consumers when buying a car? The military isn't going to take over a dealership with armed service personnel to keep Tesla from selling their cars. Sheesh.
That's right. Floridian police raided several barber shops, with a warrant to ensure the barbers were licensed practitioners, and while they were at it they handcuffed people, held them at gunpoint, and even arrested several for unrelated crimes (coincidence?!).
And if only such an event were an outlier ... sadly, it's become common, around the country.
Not the military, but if Tesla or someone else violated the law, it's no exaggeration to say that at some point law enforcement, i.e. armed personnel, would be involved. Of course, it's unlikely anyone would take it that far, but that doesn't mean force or the threat of force is not at work.
How do you think personal and private property laws get enforced?
Don't be under the illusion that our system is built upon trust and volunteer acceptance. It's built upon overwhelming brute force.
>he military isn't going to take over a dealership with armed service personnel to keep Tesla from selling their cars.
Who do you think the car dealerships will call when Telsa refuses to shut his stores down? The police. They will confiscate the property, arrest the managers/owners and shut down the business.
That is overwhelming brute force whether you call it the military or the police.
>Don't be under the illusion that our system is built upon trust and volunteer acceptance. It's built upon overwhelming brute force.
Not completely, but society still heavily relies on it. The majority of people obey (most) laws because they believe it's the right thing to do, not because they're afraid of punishment. And if they didn't, we'd very quickly find that the existing police forces are completely inadequate to keep control of a herd of psychopaths.
Companies are a little different, since their decision making is often disconnected enough that the individual morality of their employees isn't necessarily reflected in their overall behaviour.
> Who do you think the car dealerships will call when Telsa refuses to shut his stores down? The police. They will confiscate the property, arrest the managers/owners and shut down the business.
I'm going with the court system.
Businesses for the most part don't comply with the law because they are worried about a gun being pointed to their head, they are worried about being sued and being put out of business, or being sent to jail for something criminal.
> Businesses for the most part don't comply with the law because they are worried about a gun being pointed to their head, they are worried about being sued and being put out of business, or being sent to jail for something criminal.
Those are essentially the same thing. What do you think happens if a court rules that you cannot continue your business, but you do anyway? Or what happens if you are given a jail sentence and you physically resist being moved to jail?
Sure it can eventually come to that, but thinking that businesses operate for the most part in compliance with the law because they are worried about being accosted by the US military is just fear mongering.
You're making it sound comical by making it over precise. Business comply with the law because the law has the capacity to punish them. That's it, plain and simple. It's about enforcement.
Violence. Guns. These are the threats behind every piece of legislation. Comply, or we'll send the goons with guns to make you comply. That most people go ahead and comply without making the government resort to using violence doesn't mean the violence isn't right there behind every bureaucrat's pen.
By "FED" do you mean the Federal Reserve? While they don't directly engage in violence as far as I know, their powerful influence is due to the dominance of the US dollar, which is established and maintained by violence, in the form of monopoly protection (if you create a competing currency, you go to jail) and taxation.
Nice theoroy, but their influence is greater within the US than externally (obviously). Most people are manipulated by means other than violence quite effectively, just look at Advertising and other Online Scams.
I don't claim that manipulation is impossible without violence. How do you explain the Fed's tremendous influence in the US (and presumably world) economy?
If a 'normal' organisation is able to take over these roles, this organisation becomes a defacto government and most people won't resist it, as long as they are able to live within the system. People's revolutions are relatively rare in the grand scheme of things.
I should have mentioned that the reason most people don't resist government isn't simply that resistance is futile (in the way a person likely won't resist a mugger with a gun), but rather that they don't feel like they are being wronged at all.
That's a good point. In countries like France and Canada, that's how sharia works. For the people who accept it, it becomes a de facto alternate government (officially, subject to the laws of the land in which it operates, but in practice, a law unto itself).
The government is granted those powers because of the legal and social contracts we enter into as citizens of the country... it isn't, won't, and shouldn't be just like any other actor in a market. It's an organized, representative extension of the population of the country.
>The government is granted those powers because of the legal and social contracts we enter into as citizens of the country.
That's bs post-hoc justification. There is no contract and few people agreed to it. Government is accepted because it works better than no government. We haven't found the perfect way to organize society (and it may not exist), so we stick around in the local optima.
>It's an organized, representative extension of the population of the country.
This is true in theory. In practice it's a big mess. Voters don't actually have that much control. Just a single bit of input "which party do you like more right now?" And maybe they shouldn't they because direct democracy isn't that great either. The real advantage of democracy is that if the rulers really screw up, if they make the population really angry, they will eventually lose their power when the next year divisible by 4 comes around. It also encourages the politicians to make an effort to be popular (which isn't necessarily what's best, but it's better than nothing.)
Unfortunately, free markets aren't free if we let everyone burn down their neighbor's market stall. Without government, there is no free market.
Good luck building your startup if your larger competition can get away with Mafia-like tactics.
Depending upon whether people choose to actively participate in their government, it can either protect or harm us. I meet far too many laissez-faire "free market" know-it-alls who have a strong wish for the latter.
Unfortunately, free markets aren't free if we let everyone burn down their neighbor's market stall. Without government, there is no free market.
Actually that's the very definition of a truly free market.
Good luck building your startup if your larger competition can get away with Mafia-like tactics.
Right, so, the argument there is that a true free market is not a good idea. So we put up rules and regulations that we think will be beneficial to society, but we don't change the definition of "free market" to "the market structure that we find sensible."
In other words, governmental control is a direct limitation to the amount of freedom in the market, but we think that's a good thing. It's to everyone's benefit to restrict one's freedom to sell rotting rat meat labeled as beef.
That's absurd. A free market is not a market without regulations any more than a free society is a society without laws.
In both situations, freedom is best defined as that which the weakest member of the group has. A society where the weak can be bullied by the strong, coerced and cajoled by threats of force, is not a society where those people can be considered free. Unless you think that slaves are also free people, provided that there are no laws concerning slavery.
Similarly, I don't see how a market can possibly be considered free if strong incumbent players are able to exert extra-market pressure on the weak players, to bully them in ways "outside" of normal market forces. Rather, a free market is one where all players are free to act on an equal footing, competing on price, quality, service, reputation, and other "market-based" differentiators, rather than through bribes, collusion, artificial barriers to entry, and the like - because the playing field is forced level by regulations which apply to all participants equally.
"Free" does not mean "anarchistic." Free societies still have (often complex) laws, just like free markets have (often complex) regulations. The existence of laws and regulations does not necessarily make a market less free.
Actually that's the definition of the opposite of a free market. A market in which you can wield arbitrary force - without little to no consequence - against another person and their property, is not free.
None of the great free market economists responsible for laying down the very definition of what "free market" means - from Smith to Friedman to Mises and so on - have argued that to have a free market you must be able to destroy someone else's life or property. They've argued the exact opposite, that among the most important things in a free market is property rights and the defense of said property rights.
A free market does not mean a market free of protected individual rights, it means a market free of the government initiating force against individuals to arbitrarily restrain free association among people, and a market in which the government performs its proper duties, including the protection of property rights.
>Actually that's the very definition of a truly free market.
No it isn't, the free market is a very defined thing, based on the number of actors in the system, perfect information, rational actors. It has absolutely nothing to do with the presence or lack of regulation (though obviously regulation can play a role in these factors)
> It's to everyone's benefit to restrict one's freedom to sell rotting rat meat labeled as beef.
Not if the social structures necessary to enable society to restrict that freedom inevitably lead to other inefficient/undesirable restrictions, and the bad restrictions end up outweighing the good restrictions.
Government obviously performs several functions which are necessary or extremely helpful for a free market, but it's not so simple to prove that these functions couldn't be performed without a government.
Exactly. Government is not limited to some tightly-controlled definition conveniently suited to your anti-government rhetoric. It includes almost all means of organizing society. The only social structure that doesn't function as government is unenforced anarchism, which doesn't allow for market freedom because the powerful simply take from the weak.
I gave it a shot in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437083. I think this description fits pretty well with most people's idea of what is and isn't a "government," although most people probably have never tried to explain their own internal definition.
> My definition of government is not merely a set of functions performed, but rather the way they are performed, funded, chosen, etc.
Given that that's not anything remotely like the common use of the term (which is about functions), maybe you should use a more appropriate term to avoid confusion.
> Given that that's not anything remotely like the common use of the term (which is about functions), maybe you should use a more appropriate term to avoid confusion.
On the contrary. I think my definition describes what most people think of as a government. If I show up at your door with 5 tough guys, explain to you that your neighborhood has voted to instigate a 25% income tax in order to maintain the roads of the neighborhood, would you consider me to be government? Would you comply? According to what you just claimed, since I would be performing a function generally associated with government, acquiring funds the same way as government, and using a similar justification (the vote) as government, it sounds like you would consider me to be government. And yet, I do not think most people would agree.
>This is only a contradiction if you view the government as some sort of impartial referee in the game of capitalism. If instead you rightly view them as the biggest player on the field that bullies everyone else and picks favourites then there is no contradiction.
Or just as well see them as a parent that keeps the children from bullying each other.
> If instead you rightly view them as the biggest player on the field that bullies everyone else and picks favourites then there is no contradiction.
Yes, because that image is false.
The government is mostly the sock puppet of whoever has most money - biggest corporations and richest individuals, who essentially buy whatever politics suits them best.
Rest assured they derive great satisfaction from your misdirected anger against the "government".
That's not an assumption, that's what these politicians say it should be. They say, explicitly and repeatedly, that government should get out of the way of the free market. Then many of them turn around and do stuff like this.
This is as simplistic a representation as the one you're contradicting. Government is necessary for capitalism to work, the question is how much it should do beyond the minimum (law enforcement, etc.).
This is only a contradiction if you view the government as some sort of impartial referee in the game of capitalism. If instead you rightly view them as the biggest player on the field that bullies everyone else and picks favourites then there is no contradiction.