On 10/21/2014 10:18 PM, Chris Pacia wrote:
>
>> tl;dr wealth and power are interchangeable, wealth/power pools
>> up in certain lucky and industrious individuals, without
>> redistributing it, democracies devolve into oligarchies and then
>> eventually into monarchy or chaos. The US is in the oligarchy
>> phase.
>
> This likely does apply to democracies since those with access to power
> to use it to their advantage. Some gain at the expense of others. But
> for your indictment of libertarianism to stick you need to show that
> pure free market would do the same thing. How? What are the causal
> mechanisms?

2 good questions, is there a historical record of monopolization of
free markets and if so, why.

> Despite public schools doing their best to indoctrinate the
> belief that free markets lead to wealth consolidation from which we need
> the government to save us, there is really nothing in economics
> supporting this claim and economic theory and the bulk of economic
> history disprove it.
>

I'm not sure how you define The Free Market, some definitions bear
a resemblance to the physicist's "weightless vacuum", an unattainable
state which may not may not do much for explaining things but
certainly protects The Economist's beautiful model from a fickle and
unforgiving reality.
If we imagine The Free Market as something concrete like the local
bazaar, we run into a dependency on The State's monopoly of violence
to prevent Bad Harry (the antisocial .01%) from shooting you and
taking your goods rather than paying, or more realistically,
establishing his own "state" and charging you sales tax.


To what history are you referring? It seems to me that history has
been a long story of thugs uniting to form gangs, warlords then
states while professionals united to form guilds, corporations and
then eventually oligopolies and monopolies.


Thanks,
Caleb


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