[ExI] Greed + Incompetence + A Belief in Market Efficiency = Disaster

[BillK]

On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 2:17 AM, Stathis Papaioannou  wrote:
> The article cited is talking about something quite different: the idea
> that if markets are left free from government interference that will
> always be for the better. This has come to be accepted as indisputable
> fact by neocons since the early 1980's, with Reagan and Thatcher its
> most influential proponents. The result has been a 25 year debt
> bubble, so that the US economy came to consist largely of retail and
> financial services. The bubble has now well and truly burst and it
> looks like there is no escaping years of relative poverty for both
> debtor and creditor nations ahead.
>


Agreed. My interest is in understanding the world as it actually
exists and trying to make the best of what is available.

The intellectual constructs of 'free market' enthusiasts seem mostly
irrelevant as they can never exist where humans interact. One human
will always have some advantage over another, so their interaction can
never be truly 'free'. Just because you *can* buy Manhattan from the
natives very cheaply (in a 'free market') doesn't make it right.


BillK