JA Westenberg"The free market will sort it out" the free market sorted out child labour by saying yes please and we had to pass a law. That's how the free market sorts things out.
Dwampre Scorrigank@Daojoan Free market economics as a concept is inherently an evolution-worshipping theory. The idea that the market simply naturally grows into the best shape as long as we don't ever interfere in it is essentially saying we trust the processes of evolution to always produce "best". When TARP was in the news I saw explicit references to evolutionary processes – namely, that bailouts would support weak businesses that "should" be culled out by natural selection (not that I agree with TARP per se)
(it's also inherently reliant on not understanding evolution of course. I think we should teach evolution in non-biological systems, calling it something other than "evolution", in schools, so people can have the background to understand what a joke free-market economics is on a macro scale while keeping it under the radar of evangelicals)
Biggles 20X6!@Dwampre_Scorrigank "free markets" in economic parlance means something completely different to the way neoliberal and libertarians use it.
It means
'no barriers to entry it exit, or to trade/transactions', like tariffs or imperfect information or monopoly market power or barriers to market like subsidies.
Not
'No fucken rules, yeeiiw! Who wants to buy these kidneys I just acquired?', or 'stick em in a cage with knives and we'll give the job to the survivor'.
Markets must be regulated if they are to act as 'free markets', because the 'free market' model takes centuries to reach equilibrium on its own.
Thanks for that definition. To clarify I mean to argue against it as it's used in political propaganda for laissez-faire capitalism, and against expecting arbitrary desirable externalities significantly outside the scope of any particular reduction (or increase for that matter) in interventionism (absent solid evidence that it has that effect).