[Vision2020] The illusory free market (was: Unstable, Doomed, Missed Points)

[Joan Opyr]

On 8 Mar 2006, at 13:10, John D wrote in response to Melynda:

>  > I can't have every single possible choice. Why shouldn't we, as a 
> community,
>  > try to exercise responsibly the functionally limited choices we 
> have?
>
>  Because history has not been kind to experimental alternatives to the 
> free market.

Really?  History seems to have been fairly kind to Sweden, Denmark, 
Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, most of the European Union, in fact 
-- and all are what you might call socialist nanny states. Even 
Germany's economy seems to be in recovery (and that with full-strength 
unions, too.)  Would you or Jeff Harkins mind demonstrating for me 
where on earth there is a completely free and unfettered market?  Going 
once?  Going twice?  China and India are certainly growing their 
economies by leaps and bounds, but their markets are far from unbound.  
Some regulation is will always be necessary or desirable, else, we see 
the formation of market-destroying monopolies and, as Andreas Schou has 
aptly and repeatedly explained, monopsonies.

And what of international trade law?  What will we do about Chinese and 
Indian software/music/dvd piracy?  Should we withdraw our complaints 
from the ITO and allow that to continue at its current rampant rate?  I 
can't imagine Jeff freely surrendering copyright to any papers or books 
he's written; how free market would Jeff be if some cheap press in 
China decided to bootleg one of his academic treatises, republish it in 
Hong Kong, and sell it back to the U of I Library at less than a third 
of its current US university press price?  No royalties paid, of 
course; none at all.

Joan Opyr
Northern Idaho Editor
New West Magazine
www.newwest.net
www.joanopyr.com