[ExI] An old skeleton tumbles out of the list closet

[Dan]

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 2:47 AM Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this is a good way of putting it.

I'm
 not sure who first came up with it. I first heard of it from 
left-libertarian, such as those at the Center for a Stateless Society ( http://c4ss.org/ ).

> Modern capitalism is pro-business (as in Big Business with enough
> cash to bribe the shit out of politicians and admins) as opposed to
> pro-freedom.
>
> They don't compete of quality, but they pay the regulators to create impossible
> barriers for new entrants.

I
 think that might be a little misleading. I believe businesses and many 
others have rarely had qualms about using the state (and the state has 
never been a blushing bride either:) to quash competitors, to obtain 
wealth, and so forth. This might have played out very differently in 
ancient, feudal, and monarchic states, and even in early post-monarchic 
ones. Nevertheless, it was always there.

One problem is people 
often assume if one is for free markets, one must be for businesses, but
 this is like saying if one is for freedom of sexual orientation, one is
 for a specific orientation. In fact, being for free markets should mean
 being for a certain type of process and not for certain outcomes or 
certain specific actors in that process. (Granted, one can still, say, 
be against certain outcomes. For instance, nothing wrong with saying I'm
 all for free markets, but I'd work against some outcomes that might 
happen. That doesn't mean, by the way, embracing state regulations.)

> Call me a free-market anticapitalist, with
> the additional crazy thought that freedom should include freedom to
> eat. 

I
 don't think it'd be hard, since the agricultural revolution to take 
care of feeding people solely via charity. In fact, it seems more to me 
that government interferences usually make more for food shortages than 
anything else. E.g., back in the 1980s, famine in Ethiopia was not so 
much because food just became short, but because the government 
collectivized farming there (similar to the Soviet example of farm 
collectivization leading to massive food shortages). More recent food 
price rises in the Middle East (and globally) seem more due to 
government involvement in food markets and policies that incentivize a 
shift of some food crops to fuel production as opposed to where they 
would go absent these policies. (Government involvement in food 
production and food markets is so extensive, though, it's very hard to 
think how they would look if this involvement were abolished.)

Regards,

Dan