Posted on 11/29/2013 9:10:30 AM PST by markomalley
It is nonsense to speak of “free” markets,” There are only “markets.” Go back to Smith and read what he said, remembering that he was not an “economist” but a moral philosopher, and “The Wealth of Nations,” does not, as “Kapital ” does, reduce the tangible things of life to numerical abstractions. He is simply not even an empiricist. In his world the “shop,” a group of human beings trying to produce objects for sale, is what is economically most important.
You seem obsessed with the word “socialist.” The thing was even invented until the 1820, To use it to apply to anything before that time, is to create an anachronism, a distortion. Like using the world “liberal” to speak of a Whig like Burke, or even a radical like Paine. More was not a socialist but he was the king’s minister. In life he was both like the man in Bolt’s play and a very different person. It is a work of fiction, just as any biology is inevitably a work of fiction.
But yes, the problems of the poor can be “laid at the feet of the markets because markets are indifferent to poverty. They don’t exist to end poverty. The merchant worries about the poverty of himself and his family. If he only worries about himself and his family, he is a bad man. If he associates with men who cares nothing about others, then we have to ask, what kind of person is he?
It is nonsense to speak of "free" markets there are only "markets."
This is arrant nonsense of the kind we would expect from someone trying to defend the popes "economic" theories. Of course there are unregulated markets: the underground economy has many of diverse kinds, and of course, there are varying levels of regulation in other markets. To claim that the stock market is "just a market" of the same type that the black market in food stamps is "just a market" of exactly the same kind in order to defend the vacuity of this (non)idea is throwing the baby out with the baptismal water. It's an infantile understanding of why we have characterizations and classifications to begin with. What you have said is as silly as saying, their are no sauropods and therapods. There are only dinosaurs.
No.
Additionally, please go argue with "not an economist" Adam Smith if you like, and trouble me no further. I am not defending or advancing (or even talking about) Smith and have never brought up his name.
But yes, the problems of the poor can be “laid at the feet of the markets" because markets are indifferent to poverty.
The fact that you believe such a preposterous bit of claptrap is a full and complete explanation of why you think the pope has said something sensible in this regard. It's like saying, "But yes, the problem of death by electrocution can be laid at the feet of electricity." No, the problem can be laid at the feet of negligence, misadventure, and myriad causes, but electricity itself is completely indifferent to these results. It's also indifferent to the fact that the advent of modern technologies using electricity saves the lives of millions of people every year, and provides an improved standard of living to billions.
[As a matter of fact, I could just as easily claim "But yes, the problems of the poor can be “laid at the feet of God" because God is indifferent to poverty. Any material objection to His indifference you raise is on the part of indirect agencies. But again, that is also true of the ancillary benefits of markets as well.]
Now, if you want to argue that markets regulated by leftists [of whatever stripe, before, during and after 1820] have produced positive results as a consequence of the money stolen from the people participating in them, then we have something to talk about -- and you would be WRONG.
Wherever there is a con game, there are con men. In a free market, the con men outside of the transactions conducted are not allowed to expropriate money for their own benefit, while (always falsely) claiming they are doing this for the "benefit of the poor."
Finally, the fact that a term was not invented until a time certain does not mean it had no advocates or prototypes before that time. Indeed, quoting from More:
"In Utopia, where there is no private property, everyone is seriously concerned with pursuing the public welfare."
I'll let anyone following this conversation answer for themselves what More was describing. You have your ideas, and I have mine.
I think I said that the stock market is not a “free” market. That indeed, the idea of “unregulated” markets is historically impossible. Just try to have a garage sale on a regular basis and you will have a hint of how long the original markets remained unregulated. Markets can exist as a matter or law or custom, but one or the other must regulate what happens, and both law and custom require enforcement.
As to poverty, poverty is always relative and not a matter than “markets” can cure. Indeed, markets are as indifferent to this thing called “poverty,” as an electric chair is to the crime committed by the person in the chair. But going to Smith, he was not at all indifferent to such a thing, and he would indeed have been amazed by the socialist claim that a government, the same force that made it hard for a family shop to thrive could somehow effect something called social justice , or for that matter, a banking system or a marketing system, could somehow achieve a just social order.
Yet the latter claim is often made that “capitalism,” inevitably leads to political liberty and that the two feed on one another. But capitalism is a bit like modern science. It can serve a kaiser as well as a parliament; a politburo as well as a city council. That China has done so well by engaging in the world “market,” and has produced a “trickle down” system not very different from our own system, show make is pause about claiming so much for it.
Finally, More. More has no more to do with socialism as we understand it, than Harrington has with the modern Republican Party.
Free Republic offers you the ability to reread your posts. You wrote no such thing.
That indeed, the idea of “unregulated” markets is historically impossible
Not in the least bit true. There are trillions of transactions in truly free markets every day. Perhaps you have never been to a market in an ethnic neighborhood, or outside of the USA. I encourage you to get out more.
In any event, your garage sale analogy is not even true. My neighbor has been carrying on a garage sale twice per year every year since she moved in next door 30 years ago. She has never been visited by the authorities, nor paid for a permit, nor agreed to any regulations whatsoever, not even the implied warranties in the UCC.
As for the pathetically lame claim that her sale is "regulated by custom?" Bwaaaahhhhhaaaaaahhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaa! Keep digging. That is not what's meant by regulation in either law or economics.
As to poverty, poverty is always relative and not a matter than “markets” can cure.
Thanks for demolishing your own bizarre "argument" about laying poverty "at the feet of markets." It was unnecessary, as I had already done so.
But going to Smith, he was not at all indifferent to such a thing,
You keep going to Smith as if I had invoked him as an authority (or as if he was one.) I have not, and warned you in the previous post that your efforts to engage Smith were futile. He is not on either end of this conversation.
Yet the latter claim is often made that “capitalism,” inevitably leads to political liberty and that the two feed on one another.
Von Hayek estabishles why this is so. You should read him, and I hope you will read him more carefully than Smith.
But capitalism is a bit like modern science.
Nope, not in the least.
One requires the freedom of individuals to interact economically. It cannot really exist without liberty. The other is nothing more or less than a systematic discipline for the investigation of the material world. It demonstrably existed in the Socialist hell of the Soviet Union, where, contrary to your nonsensical assertions, economic liberty could not.
It can serve a kaiser as well as a parliament; a politburo as well as a city council.
No. It cannot. This preposterously inane.
The fact the you believe this reveals you to be as ignorant as the Bishop of Rome, and the Jesuit "economists" whose "theories" he apes. These fools have done incalculable damage in the Third World, and if the pope's defenders on these threads are any indication, have been surprisingly effective in propagating their nonsense here as well.
I would urge you to actually read von Hayek. He demolishes your simple-minded notions about economic liberty in only a few pages. Socialism always results in tyranny, because command economies ultimately don't command markets, or even money. They command people. And the systems in which you (and the pope) believe are nothing more than what PJ O'Rourke has correctly described as "socialism by the drink." Cheers! Drink deeply, then slither off to one of the left-wing forums which espouse these disgusting ideas.
That China has done so well by engaging in the world “market,” and has produced a “trickle down” system not very different from our own system, show make is pause about claiming so much for it.
It would indeed be alarming if any of what you posted in the last paragraph were true.
Fortunately, like EG 54 and the rest of your postings, it is rubbish.
First, China participates in many global and local markets (no need for the quotes, they are markets, indeed.) Its citizens do not. The only entity which freely engages in world markets is China, Inc. Its citizens have no such participation.
Second, The US doesn't have a "trickle down" system. "Trickle down" is a derogatory Leftist description of Supply-side economics, and the real theory doesn't involve any "trickling down." The fact that the pope chose to use this loaded phrase indicates clearly on what side of the economic divide his sympathies lie. But more importantly, it is, like the description of a unicorn or the Gift of Constantine, a description written upon a lie.
There is no trickle down in China, either. China is effectively a hybrid economy, whose successful economic applications are in an advanced (technologically, that is) state of fascism. It's growth will not persist forever, because you cannot build crony economies beyond a certain point; only the anointed are free actors. Their slaves are left to drag the system down.
China's growth for the most part has occurred because the system they have abandoned (and the one in which you and the pope evidently believe) is even worse. You can pretend otherwise, but your use of the words "trickle down" and your disparaging description of your own country as somehow comparable to China betray your real sensibilities clearly enough.
China serves as a reminder that even a radically authoritarian state can have a “capitalist,” system, or one that fits into the context of the World Market. I fail to see how the “parallel” you speak of is much different from the arrangement between Bush Administration and the banking system, except, of course the lack of pretense by the Government. Is this not like the” progressivism,” that TR and Wilson fostered? Of course Singapore is a better example.
You are confused.
There's a difference between a country which trades on a market with limited regulations and a country that has a capitalist system. In the latter, its citizens trade on the market, and the country does not trade -- because in a free economic system the government participates only in governance per se and does not meddle where it does not belong.
What you have in mind is a logical construct, rather than the actual thing. What the Chinese have created is “ capitalism,” and the forms of government matter less than the general process, whether it fits into the whole system of world trade. How much personal freedom exists in a country seems relative so long as it doesn’t affect that process.
No. This is your problem, not mine. You believe that if trade in world markets is available to a country, its citizens enjoy access to those markets, and hence at least one dimension of "freedom." This is true only to the extent that they all enjoy full access.
What the Chinese have created is “ capitalism,” and the forms of government matter less than the general process, whether it fits into the whole system of world trade.
No. Again, you are trying to wedge everything into your argument that "everything is capitalism." But the ability of a government or a handful of its preferred citizens or corporations to trade is not the same thing as capitalism.
How much personal freedom exists in a country seems relative so long as it doesn’t affect that process.
This is the place you'd like to arrive at, because you want now to conclude that the pope has said something brilliant: China is a slave state, therefore, government control of an economy is not a bad thing -- see how well China is doing?
But China is not doing as well in relative terms as it might be if it were free (economically and politically.) China has many structural problems and its growth is self-limiting, because internally there is little economic or personal liberty in China.
I might just as easily say the following (which has many more elements of truth and sense than your arguments have):
"Christianity in general and the Roman Church in particular had done less to improve the plight of the poor after many centuries than urbanization and the first and second industrial revolutions did in the span of a few decades."
"For those foolish enough to believe that this was a result of the benign influence of religion and morality, the truth is we saw great advances in national wealth in neo-pagan fascist states in the early to mid-20th century, and in the atheist states of the Soviet Union."
"Anyone wishing to argue that this was the result of a residual influence of Christianity in the West will need to contend with the atheist state of China, where Christianity played no significant role whatsoever, but urbanization, industrialization, and technology lifted hundreds of millions from poverty in less than 40 years."
Now we must go back and ask you -- and the pope -- if the expansion of access of some of China's markets without any real change in government programs for 'the poor' produced these results, and if the same results came about in the West, also without any real change in government programs for 'the poor,' until we entered a post-industrial era [an era in which they are now stagnating, by the way] why would capitalists be the least bit interested in your advice on economic matters?
The answer is: we would not be interested, and we are not interested. The Church has not helped the poor. The Mosques have not helped the poor. And certainly the Hindu and Buddhist Temples have never helped the poor. But capitalism has.
Maybe capitalists should dispense spiritual advice to you and to the pope. We certainly could not say anything with less historical or practical validity than what he -- and his benighted order -- have had to say about economics.
I think you have confused our constitutional system, a system in which capitalism thrives, with capitalism itself.
Papists (and other mystics) take note: our economic decline -- including the economic decline of the working and middle classes -- began in the 1930's, just when we began to impose the very "processes" and "structures" that the pope is calling for more of. The poor have been able to live off of the depreciation of a wealthy nation for 80 years, but the time is now upon us when the very plans, structures, and processes that the pope thinks are such grand ideas, instituted during America's "progressive" era, will mean widespread misery for the poor.
A broke country doesn't take care of the indigent very well.
It goes without saying that he'll never realize what caused the misery, any more than will you or his other blind followers.
Be that as it may, capitalism involves the free use of money by non-governmental agents regardless of their political status. A Chinese businessman can have as much freedom of action as any of the moguls in Silicon Valley, provided that those in political power allow them to have this. There is, btw, not much of a “free “market in the valley these days, since the big four have pretty much got the government on their side.
This is a silly comment, even by your standards. It's like the nun I had for religion junior year of high school who told me with a straight face that "William Tyndale wasn't murdered because he translated the Bible into English. He was murdered because he translated the Bible into English without authorization."
Just so.
The idea that a businessman has freedom of action provided "he's allowed to have it" would be a hilarious oxymoron if it didn't reveal such unreasoning cluelessness.
Freedom you are "allowed to have" isn't freedom. It's slavery.
The Constitution doesn't grant us freedom, it recognizes it. And murdering a man for exercising his God-given freedom of conscience isn't religious "authority." It's just murder.
Do you really think that capitalists cannot subvert a republican form of government, or that they cannot thrive under a despot?
We know that as pluralist societies developed in the Reformed Christian nations, the Roman Church did everything it could, including war and assassination, to strangle republicanism in its crib, even with enlightened monarchs like Elizabeth who were inclined to live and let live.
We know that the Church has attempted from its inception to subvert the United States of America, founded by its mortal enemies, Freethinkers and Freemasons. We know that the Roman Church was so alarmed by the whole idea of freedom of conscience, it even coined a special phrase to describe the heresy: Americanism.
Leo XIII was egregiously wrong then, as Francis is now.
We also know that the Roman Church has thrived quite well under despots. So I understand what motivates your question.
The short answer is: capitalists have tried to do that, and have largely failed. In the few cases where they've succeeded, they haven't survived for very long, because they've destroyed the foundations of economic liberty, without which capitalism can't survive, and vice versa.
Can capitalism thrive under despotism? That would seem to be what you're arguing in favor of, but unfortunately for you thesis, you cannot cite for me an example of a place where citizens are not free and capitalism has flourished. You think a handful of businessmen in China permitted to ply their trade is "capitalism." It's not. It's fascism. Failing to understand why this is wrong, you fall into the same trap as your Church and its left-wing Society of Jesus.
Elizabethan England was a police state, where any religious dissenter, Catholic or separatist, was subject to arrest. Religious toleration, as state policy, did not come until the Glorious Revolution, and even then allowed dissenting protestants not much room. As to republicanism in Anglo thinking that was a development that had to do with the rejection of traditional monarchy, which took a very different course in Britain than elsewhere. Historically, it was attached to the city-state, limited to the enivirons of the urban cores, such as the Republic of Venice. In the British Isles, we do have the Commonwealth —respublica—which was a principality without a prince. If Cromwell has not died young, he probably would have assumed the crown,and probably already would his very competent young heir has not died before. him. Indeed, if Washington had had an heir who was the least bit able, our government would have taken on a very different shape. It is almost miraculous that our Founders were able to create a republican government, which came about because a monarchy was not politically possible.
Washington was offered a crown and refused it. His heirs would have been raised in the same tradition. As an adherent of the Church of Rome, I'm not surprised you believe such nonsense; the priests, oblates, and nuns fed me similar rubbish for twelve years.
Parliament was in the ascendancy for many decades when the American Revolution occurred. The institutions established in the colonies were not very different from England, which rejected despotism not long after it rejected the very Church that has always been comfortable with any tyrant who didn't tip over the collection plate.
You are truncating history. It took almost a decade for Rome to give up on trying to get Elizabeth to join the Catholic side. Phillip hoped to marry her to perpetuate the long alliance with Spain. The Protestant party wanted to break this alliance, for more than religious interests, which is why they became involved in the tug of war in the Low Countries. Elizabeth was personally tolerant, but she was like Mary before her, she was driven to extremes by her overriding desire to save her own life. But you assume that she was in control of the situation. As a matter of fact, we really don’t to what extent she was in control of her own party and to what extent she was a pawn. Until she was forty, by which time she was too old to have children and was deeply involved the rebellion in the Low Countries, there was hope she would a Catholic prince. Afterwards, she was solidly in the Protestant camp and Mary Stuart being in the Catholic, then the danger to her was patent, especially after the pope had attempted to depose her. It was then that the plots began and the countermeasures that made English a police state. The violence in France made everyone aware of the acuteness of the situation. Both sides had gone mad, and not forgotten was the savagery of the War of the Roses, only two generation in the past.
Speaking of truncation, you seem to have conveniently omitted about four decades, during which time England was indeed a Roman police state, hundreds of nobles were exiled or self-exiled, imprisoned, or tortured, and hundreds of Reform Christians were burned alive.
The English police state under Bloody Mary was considerably liberalized when Elizabeth ascended. I'm sure you were taught otherwise, but your version of history -- the Roman version -- like the biography of "Saint" Sir Thomas More, who tortured heretics in his own home, is a fabrication.
How long do you think that Mary was queen? Or More was Lord Chancellor under Henry? Even Henry’s spell of anti-Lutheran activity lasted less than a decade before he turned to Cromwell and Cranmer to remake the English Church. These reforms were so unpopular in England that only the people’s attachment to the dynasty forestalled a rebellion. As for the Roman influence, probably the only strongly Romanist we ever had as king was Henry V.
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