Unfortunately I never been to Saskatchewan. Never been west of Ontario, or east of Alberta.
We have settled here into a usual pattern of daytime eighties and nighttime sixties. But winter is on its way and the surfers will leave the ocean and head for the mountains. The ocean and ski lifts are about an hour away from me -- in opposite directions.
The market is simply a description of people exchanging things. Nothing strange about people exchanging things. They have been doing it since the beginning of time. If, as you seem to think, it's a place where everybody get screwed, then people wouldn't trade anymore. Overwhelmingly, the market is a place where people trade to become better off than they were before they traded.
Heck! You trade all the time and are better off because of it. People by the tens of millions trade at computer shows and at flea markets and out of their car boots.
I don't know how many of your rules and regulations there are at these places, but I doubt there are many. People don't want to be protected from the market. They want protection from people who want to take their markets away.
You're right about political interference. Politicians have no faith in the intellectual prowess of their constituents (as they voted for the politicians its obvious their pilot lights must be out) so a lot of their political time is spent protecting people from things they don't want to be protected from.
I just love your "direct the market into hopefully beneficial activities for all". The market is naturally beneficial to the people involved in it or they wouldn't be involved in it. The content that left-wing politicians feel for most people is evident in their desire to try to protect them. "I'm all right Jack, but you need help."
If the market were allowed to be free from these political meddlers, people would handle their affairs themselves.
It amuses me, Tom old lad, that apparently, when you get rid of the free market and put it under the control of political appointees, none of them will be guilty of "greed, exploitation, manipulation and philosophical distortion".
Perhaps the reason why socialism inevitably fails is that we don't have any "honesty pills". We do know socialist politicians have " let's share pills" because an important part of their philosophy is coercively sharing other people's things.
In fact, the free market is the way to stop "greed, exploitation, manipulation and philosophical distortion". The way to start with these excessive profits you love to talk about is to get rid of the political obstacles to the free market.
The action of the market is to produce the best goods at the cheapest price. Any attempt to grab "excessive" profit is rapidly squelched by competitors bringing to the market better goods at cheaper prices.
The opposite of the free market is a controlled economy, in which disaster we are now all participating. However, in spite of the politicians playing with our lives, the flea markets and the car boot sales will go on.
Real people love the free market, and so they should.
Harry
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Thomas wrote
Morning Harry
Enjoying California weather here in the Great Northern Plains of Saskatchewan - hope you are enjoying the same.
The word "market" is a great big generalization. Underneath it is 10 million activiities. These activities are surrounded by laws and regulations to protect people from the market and direct the market into hopefully beneficial activities for all. Sad to say, these high ideals are often subverted by the actors in the market. It is even more compounded by the political actors who interact with the market for private gain over public good.
Given that we were all given an "honesty pill" and a "let's share pill" and a "let's do no harm to our environment or the people in it pill" - the idealistic market might have some chance of living up to it's idealistic promise. Sad to say, such pills are unavailable.
Underneath all the rhetoric is the sad truth of greed, exploitation, manipulation and philosophical distortion.
I will make a little prophecy. The market as we know it will change from a profit driven activity that manipulates society to a sharing economy within the next twenty five years. For this current market will crumble. Millions will starve, die, be displaced and value will collapse. Out of these ruins will come the understanding of a cooperative market that redistributes the available goods and services in other ways. When the current crop of "experts" die off, new thought will come.
What the shape of this new market will be will be answered by history. We will solve this problem and 200 years from now, people will study this last century with as much disbelief as we now think of nobility and kingship as a means of governance.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
---------- >From Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject Re [Futurework] Free Trade kills Why not economy games" like "war games" instead of economy like war? >Date Sat, Oct 4, 2003, 323 PM >
> Tom, > > The market is just a device for allowing people to exchange their goods and > services. It has no responsibility to anyone nor does anyone have a > responsibility to it. > > When a market is free, everybody benefits from its use. When everyone uses > the market and benefits from its use, then as they are the community, the > community benefits from the market "as if by an invisible hand". > > And that is all the "invisible hand" means. When every member of the > community is better off, then the community is better off. Does that make > sense? > > Harry
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.comcast.net/~haledward ****************************************************
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