Uuhh… the slave trade was between people selling slaves and people buying slaves. The slaves themselves weren’t a party to the transaction, they were what was being bought and sold. If I take your meaning aright, you’re saying that because it was necessary for the government to confirm (if not establish) that African slaves had no rights and therefore their wishes didn’t enter into the equation, that the slave trade was ipso facto “government controlled”. :dubious: Well, I’ll say it’s a logically consistant position, but not that it’s necessarily correct.
I was having dinner with some people last week and the subject of slavery came up. One of the guys said that it would have died out anyway because employing people under a capitalist system is cheaper. You have to house and feed your slaves and keep them healthy whether you have work for them to do or not. Under modern labor relations you can just sack employees and it isn’t your concern whether they live or die.
I guess livestock traders can’t exist in a free market then. After all, the cattle and horses never give their permission.
I’m really astounded at the willful failure to grasp what slavery is. The whole reason for buying slaves is so that you don’t have to bargain with the slave for his labor; you simply take it. The slave doesn’t have to be party to any transaction involving his services, because the slave traders and slave owners have de facto ownership of the slave, by virtue of capturing him, preventing his escape, and inducing him to work. Whether the government recognizes the propriety of owning another human being or not, the fact that the plantation owner is willing to pay value to acquire him and keep him is enough to have a market. Why do you think they called it the slave trade?
I don’t understand the point of the OP. The “free market” is simply the right to buy and sell a particular good or service at whatever price you can negotiate, with a minimum of regulation. It doesn’t really “do anything”. There is a market for guns, slaves, drugs and prostitutes because there are people willing to buy and sell them.
It’s sort of like blaming gravity for wrecking your car because I tossed a cinder block off the overpass.
The OP might as well ask “what are the worst things people have done to make a buck?”
The single most reprehensible thing the free market does is to provide people with the means to purchase the things they want, instead of the things critics think they should want.
I think a really reprehensible act was the North America Free Trade Agreement. It sounded good on paper, but it has destroyed countless small businesses as well as homes in Mexico, slashed wages and sent untold thousands of illegal migrants here to try to earn a living.
No, because that question implies an individual level, while this allows (and practically requires to be) on a societal level. Todderbob’s example is also a good example of a limitation your question would impose, since they didn’t stop selling something to MAKE a buck, but to avoid losing them..
Plus, the fact that there are people willing to buy stuff would mean bupkis if there was no way of purchasing those things. So them merely wanting it is an insufficient cause.
It’s not like blaming gravity, as that is an immutable law. Free trade is not. As evidenced by the fact that even our market is quite regulated.
I agree with msmith537, and I don’t understand your post. If you have the time, please explain
- What something means to be on a ‘societal level’.
- The right for two parties to voluntary exchange goods/services is a not an immutable law.
- ‘As evidenced by the fact that even our market is regulated.’
Many of the posts involve the typical strawmen of coercion or force (like slavery) which adds little to the discussion. The mere fact that coercion or force is involved invalidates the notion that a ‘free market’ is at play…tautologically.
Externalities are another matter, which seem to drift in and out of the posts above without anybody realizing the distinction and why it needs to be made in those cases.
I think most of the libertarians and free marketeers on this board would be happy to participate in discussions like these, but as usual the OP is so obviously biased from the start, and the participants are the usual gaggle of left-wingers who want to run into the arms of government officials to save them from themselves.
Wow, you really hadn’t heard about Dole? It was a pretty big story here after the documentary of it was released, and Doles lawsuit against it.
I’m not seeing the difficulty in recognising that slavery was an example of the free market in action. Slaves were property, tradeable goods. They were bought and sold on an open market. Dealers negotiated prices with sellers for slaves. Further, the concept of slavery has existed for thousands of years, even in societies without functioning governments (or governments that we’d recognise as such). What is the problem here?
When enough people want something, it is on a societal level.
If enough people want something then there is money to be made by someone else providing it for them.
Free trade is like gravity in that it takes economic energy to regulate it, much as it takes energy for an aircraft to resist Earths gravity. People will naturally seek ways to save money on purchases and make money on sales. Regulation doesn’t stop that. If there is enough money to be made, people will circumvent regulation as evidenced by under the table jobs and black markets.
The ‘free market’ as it’s used in the OP is not an actual existing situation, but an idea (and for many an ideology). The concept is that people should be able to freely exchange goods and services with little to no governmental interference. In this way the ‘free market’ has no agency and can do nothing. But people can do things in the name of the ‘free market’ or use the ‘free market’ as an excuse to allow things to happen.
The better question is what is the most reprehensible thing people (who have agency) have done in the pursuit of profit? A follow up question would be how has free market ideology allowed these reprehensible things to occur?
I question (and have considerable doubt about) whether a ‘free market’ can ever really exist. But then this depends on someone’s definition of the term (mostly in regards to how much regulation, if any, is allowed). IMO a much more interesting and important concept is the role of ‘free market’ ideology in our times.
I think BP gives a good (but probably not the most egregious) example. Deregulation of off-shore drilling lead to the absence of an emergency cut off switch. When the leak began BP could not easily shut it off and the spill was much worse than it could have been otherwise. The deregulation happened because some people, who I can only assume have a belief in the good of the ‘free market’, made it so.
FYI, I’m not a pro- nor anti- ‘free market’ dogmatist. One could and should investigate the role of anti-‘free market’ ideology and its effects, but that is not the point of this specific thread.
I’m voting for American slavery.
Well, the relevant question is, this is a failure of the market compared to what? Is there a non-market entity, say, some priesthood or mercenary gang, that’s willing and able to keep producing antivenom forever? And let’s not forget that research into antivenoms - discovering the things to begin with - is made possible by the higher standards of living that the market has brought us, so that we both free time and resources to do research. If we’re calling “not doing something that can potentially be done if we poured all resources into a narrow field” an active evil, then no system is free from blame, yet the free market and its attendant economic growth is more blameless than most. And as long as the market operates and living standards increase, we’ll have more resources to deal with increasingly rare problems, and antivenom production will be addressed.
Not being God is not a valid failure of the free market.
The problem is that the slaves themselves did not engage in a voluntary, ‘free market’ transaction to become slaves. That occurred via coercion and the use of force.
That’s an externality - A did business with B which imposed costs on C, without C’s consent. Fertile ground for discussion re: free market ideology and libertarianism.
As mentioned, whether the slaves voluntarily became slaves is an irrelevance. The slaves were property. The purchase and sale of slaves occurred on an open market.
No, it’s extremely relevant. Distortions to the market caused by use of force or the threat of force via government control are extremely relevant. Prices are distorted and resources are inefficiently allocated as a result. The African slaves would have been perfectly able to offer their services voluntarily for a wage, for example. I imagine the whole economic structure of the South would have been different as a result - and probably better and more sustainable, even without considering the horrific social implications of slavery.
Another example I can think of, off the top of my head, is when the Clinton adminstration sold off frequency spectrums in the 1990’s and then claimed that was a superlative example of how government could be ‘profitable’.
Well yeah…when you seize assets by force, don’t pay for them, and then sell them, you can make a profit. No duh.
I’m not saying the Clinton adminstration shouldn’t have done that. What I’m saying is the whole notion of ‘free market’ becomes somewhat meaningless when you have acquired resources by use of force against someone’s will.
Given your terms, it is arguable whether a “free market” has ever existed, or is even possible as a practical fact. The clatter of cash attracts “force” like shit draws flies. By your simplistic definition, laws against selling ground kitten as hamburger distort the sacred “free market” because the police are authorized to use “force”. You might as well be discussing the economic impact of the Tooth Fairy on the dental industry.