Anyone advocating that government should take money from the general population and give it to corporations, or accepting such money, is to that extent against free trade.

It's what people do, not what they say that matters.

It doesn't matter if the person suggesting it is George W. Bush, or Paulson, or Goldman Sachs, or General Motors. If they are for government bailouts, by definition they are to that extent against the basic principles of free trade and capitalism. People who think George W. Bush stands for 'free trade' are simply confused.

The irony of it is that you correctly identify these massive acts of theft as 'heists', as robbery, which is what they are. But the companies don't get the money by stealing it directly from your bank account. They get it via government, in reliance on government's monopoly of force. That's the whole point.

But even if we say that it's the companies' fault because they influenced or controlled government, that's still no defence of the role of government, is it?

The principles of free trade and capitalism, both, mean that the government
a) shouldn't take the money in the first place, either by taxing or inflating, and
b) shouldn't hand it out again to someone else.

In that case, none of this entire crisis would have happened.

People are confused, on the one hand blaming the recipients of the handouts rather than the thieves who took it in the first place, and then calling on government to fix the problem, when it is government that both took the money from ordinary people and paid it out to their political favourites.

Why are we drifting off track? The real issue us did the investor have enough information to make a reasonably valid decision to invest. Some did but many didn't since they were at 4th 10th hand away from the festering debt. However many of those who invested in the derivative stream have only themselves to blame. The warnings were being made public more than 12 months ago. Take a too high a gamble and you are bound to lose. At the end of the day the investor has to carry the can for making a wrong decsion. I wonder what has happened to those Chinese investors who got it wrong on behalf of their government? That would cdertainly be Socialism in action. As for GMH Ford etc they must welcome the current problems as a way of off loading some of their crook mamagement processes - perhaps Toyota could show them how to operate in the USA.

dio: Rubbish. You're obviously parroting some glib, unexamined concepts in a careless, freestyle manner; it now just appears pretentious and oblivious to historical precedent and extensive critique.

The very notion of "free trade" is itself a blank cheque for oligopolies, monopolies and imperialism; their neo-Darwinian (and often eugenicist) worldviews determine just how the "free trade" fairy tale operates in real economic life. The public and state domains of treasury, the reserve and the government are all fair game to such aggression. "Freedom" in "free trade" is much the same divisive, dysfunctional or, at least inefficiently primitive impulse as it is in fascism. And yes, fascists just loved "free trade" notions in their own imperialistic ventures and state reforms. If they could not achieve such thorough "free trade" empires as the East India Company, they certainly admired them and tried to emulate them in such areas as northern Africa and eastern Europe.

"Free trade" is like "free speech": a mythological notion that, on even superficial examination, is certainly not "free" but comes at a price only within reach of those rampant subverters and usurpers of state and democratic processes. That is why mainstream (funded and press-accredited) political parties all kowtow to neoliberalist, globalizing, free trade programs which suit imperialist ventures in much the same manner as the East India Company's leading role in British and Dutch aggression and enslavement around the world. Therefore, in Globalization's neolib regime, governments too are anything but "free" to act: they are infiltrated and sponsored into their role merely to serve the interests of free trade's supposed "fittest" oligarchs, who constantly break and set rules for their own increased and continued dominance. That's why free-trade creeps love reading snippets of Nietzsche too.

Then your quote "In that case, none of this entire crisis would have happened" [i.e., without government taxing, inflating and handing out]. You really don't have a clue. Give up. Stop wasting all our bandwidth.

Mil

Your personal argument proves nothing, and don't think it conceals the fact that the rest of your argument cannot withstand critical scrutiny.

Your method is simply to label anything you don't like as "free trade" even if it's government that's doing it.

According to your argument, if government uses its powers of compulsion to tax people and hand it out to political favourites, this is "free trade". The expropriations of the Treasury, and of the Federal Reserve, according to you, are "free trade".

You have not got to the stage of understanding the most basic definitions of the terms in issue.

By the way, the "free" in free trade does not refer to some mystical metaphysical perfect freedom: it simply means freedom from restrictions on entry being imposed by government.

However if, as you say, the big corporations who are benefitting from the bailouts have infiltrated government to such an extent that the Federal Reserve is corrupted into channeling billions of dollars to those corporations, and government is not able to stop them, then why not abolish the Federal Reserve? How can you justify its existence, even in your own terms?

The Darwinist jibe is on the other foot: it is people advocating government interventions who are in favour of the strong using force to take from the weak.

No, it's nothing personal, but you're clearly off your head, made worse probably from some corrupt education. Find someone else to misrepresent, bashing those square pegs into round holes.

Mil-observer in this thread displays the deep structure underlying all Marxian argument.

It starts out with statements purporting to be economic theory, critiquing the role of capitalism, and claiming or implying that a better and fairer society would result from governmental control of decisions over production.

But when the errors and fallacies in these ideas are shown, the argument turns into personal insult, bitter invective, and a repeat of the original claims.

But when these fallacies are named as such, the argument becomes mere personal insult and bitter invective.

And when the fallacies in that are exposed, it degenerates into personal insult, mere impotent rage.

It is important to understand that this approach to argumentation is no coincidence. Why not? Because Marxian theory cannot withstand critical scrutiny. The fallacy of personal insult is the ultimate bedrock of Marxian argument. Distraction is all they’ve got.

At base, the anti-capitalist arguments resolve into this: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everything was wonderful? We are right because we are right.”

Yet the whole point of theory is that it’s supposed to have explaining power. When theory is shown to be erroneous, the rational response is either to accept the refutation, or to rebut it with reason or evidence.

The fact that Marxians do not do this, but only persist in trotting out the same fallacious arguments, shows that the belief system belongs in the category of faith, not reason. It’s immune to refutation. It’s like one of those plastic punching clowns that just keeps popping back up again.

But if I am wrong, then perhaps Mil_observer can give a justification for the existence of the Federal Reserve, and its permanent inflation of the money supply, or explain how the government’s taxing of the population to pay billions to political favourites can sensibly be called “free trade”?

All the anti-capitalist arguments so far are merely circular. I invite anyone to show how the role, or the incompetence, of government in controlling the nerve-centre of the market economy - the price of the money supply - can be blamed on “capitalism”