BigBallinStalin wrote:BigBallinStalin wrote:_sabotage_ wrote:Ask your monkey man to forgive me, but until need is eliminated from the equation, there will never be such a thing as a free market.
Secondly, as long as one set of people cannot fulfill their needs without another set, there will always be dependence. Once need is eliminated, will we be truly independent. We were not created masters of the known universe with all of its resources at its disposal to fulfill the desires of a few. We will be judged by the least among us. When you explain your theories of economics with its embedded economic disparity, starvation, war profiteering, the monopolization of resources and heavy dependent chains placed on existence, you may regret not preparing for the inquiry better.
You suggest that free markets will solve all ills, but it does not intend to solve those ills as it is busy profiting off them.
The chance of life is quite slim. The chance of any specific life is even slimmer. The resources of this planet were not created by man, so why may he own them and partition them? Why is one man's work enough to earn him the land of 50 men or fifty thousand? We are born naked and will leave empty handed but if to hurt each other for more toys in between, is that a bet to make with your soul? The chance of you getting that soul was after all pretty slim.
Postulating post-scarcity utopias is useless. May as play with your belly button.
Also, much of what you written to describe my stance is incorrect, and it's becoming obvious that you're simply ignoring any contradiction and falsehood revealed with your position, so please, sir, continue playing with your belly button.
Bold
The underlined is nonsense for reasons explained above.
The bold is a strawman fallacy.
The italicized is nonsensical. Free markets don't intend anything; individuals do--it's up for them to decide how they'll use their wealth.
Even if they spend their wealth on themselves, it still helps people since they must exchange that wealth for other people's property. Also, there's nothing wrong with profit (and loss); you profit and lose everyday--everyone does.
RE: resources of the planet, are you familiar with property rights? I don't buy teleological or god-driven arguments about the Earth; those arguments usually turn into excuses for other people's desire to control other people's stuff.
Bold: Wrong. I own land, a relatively indestructible house and have my needs met entirely by my own labor. I require nothing from you or society and yet the land gives me a surplus and therefore I may profit off of it. I do not need to spend the profit and may merely accumulate it. My wife is Chinese and enjoys nothing better than to watch her bank balance increase. This is quite a common Chinese mentality. On the other hand, they are quite happy to make any investment which protects them against the state.
Italicized: And here is where your free market approach starts to fail. The state is given power to secure resources. Those resources are scarce, otherwise individuals wouldn't require them of the government. The energy of oil is artificially maintained scarcer to obtain the greatest profit. Because only scarce resources can create a monopoly. For this reason, we make resources scarce artificially. Nuclear energy comes out and we have huge protests against the dangers, meanwhile completely ignoring the safe and widely available alternative to Uranium. The guy heading the US's first attempts in 50 years, besides using it in military vehicles, said that in all his years of university, he heard thorium talked about during one week. I am not suggesting a major conspiracy, but if I were trying to attract students, I wouldn't be promoting their jobless future. If I were in the energy department, I wouldn't want readily available access to cheap energy as that eliminates the need for me, eliminates other positions I can enter in the job market and I'm just the guy who knew stuff yesterday. If I were an economist, I wouldn't want to see the GDP crash and everyone pleased by it.
Compressed air vehicles and compressed air networks ran around Chicago until the company and patent was bought up and buried. If a product threatens me down the road, buy it up cheap and quash it. If a technology threatens to reduce 40% of the demand from the gas stations annual $350b in sales just in the US but the guy who created the new technology is looking to make $400m starting in 10 years, your free market tells the oil companies to pay that guy $250m now and quash it. Students at MIT developed a new battery technology that is composed of some of the most common elements on earth and runs hot. Bill Gates now owns it, and he isn't the best endorsement for free markets. Not only does the scarcity enable the profits of the companies, it enables the power of the government. And were we to free the markets completely, then they are the ones that have the cash to buy something and quash it, or withhold it until it makes it more profitable to release, or supply it as their self interest dictates. Six Sense was set to go on sale 6 years ago, bought and delayed. Millimeter thin screens were developed ten years ago, but Sony, et al, want to sell us LCDs, plasma, etc before they bring out the new toy. The new toy will be built to last 3-5 years and will break. The Hong Kong government had an agreement not to receive manufactured obsolescence products from suppliers, but most individuals are happy with a 3-5 year product because they know the newer version will be out then anyway. Free markets do not intend to provide us with products that benefit us, the men who run the free markets intend to benefit themselves, and those will always be the ones with the most cash and power.
The sunlight we receive can provide us with more than enough energy for double our world population all functioning an American's energy use. The most efficient means we have of converting sunlight to energy is patented by BP. The next most efficient way we have has recently been legalized in several states, after being withheld for decades. We have known for nearly a hundred years that hemp is four times more efficient than trees in making paper. All that scarce land for growing pine didn't need to be so scarce. An acre of hemp can make you a house that will stand generations and to a higher standard than current building material. Scarcity is a myth perpetuated by those in power to maintain it. Once the myth is broken, Rockefeller's Chicago Boys will be no more.
Underlined: Certainly in my lifetime, we will not be independent from the planet. But if I my needs are fulfilled by my own land, I can be independent of the monetary system.
My wife's family survived off of an acre. Only a few times a year was the work heavy and her father had free time to practice a craft. He was a herbalist, his brother a butcher, another a carpenter. There are about 20,000 people on 50,000 acres. In a more highly specialized society, we would say, that the surplus of those farmers is less than that of a mechanized system. This doesn't take into account the 20,000 mouths the system already feeds though, or how they would survive otherwise. If they sell their land, or are forced off, that person has to make a living elsewhere. It pushes them into the city and provides cheap skilled labor to the market, pushing out those who are accustomed to the comfort of their position, but who the employer sees as a burden due to the accrued benefits he must offer. The person who has entered the workforce is not worse off, because he had been in the same position previously, without the hassle of food, shelter, water, energy, etc requirements that he has in the city. the person forced out of the workforce is also in a worse position. The company who is profiting of the land which formerly sustained 20,000, isn't accessing the resources of the 50,000 acres, but just of the 20,000 in production, but are benefiting. The government, which has better control over one company than 20,000 farmers, is now more able to use those resources to its advantage. And therefore disregard for those resources, if 20,000 people aren't drinking the water, who cares if we pollute it? China has 800,000,000 farmers. Were a repeat of what happened to agriculture in the US occur in China, it would be devastating on the lower classes.
Now you will say that he also had a craft. Sure. I saw my uncle-in-law butcher a pig while I was there. An exchange of favors to the neighbors family. Mostly money is not used, just saved. I would hope that if people had all the time in the world on their hands, they wouldn't die of boredom but pursue something they were interested in. Why the money is needed, I don't know. I helped you butcher a pig, you helped me deliver a baby. I don't see the one should be so unequal to the other. Each should be independent to choose a profession without the force of need behind it.
Exchanges will happen, but they will be true exchanges, not deemed of necessity. Not unequal in regards to a man's chosen profession. And this will be achieved by lifting the veil on the true abundance of resources and maximizing the utility of resources which can be locally produced. That is, why is the farmer selling the land in the first place if it's so great? Because he doesn't know how great it is. Applying our modern day understanding to natural systems will enable him to live at a standard at which he wouldn't sell. At which point the demand for freeing the land for use will be greater not in dollars but in the will of the people above the will of the government to stop them.
