We [Modern Western Culture] abhor Social Anarchy.
Social Anarchy is rejected because it is seen to result in chaos
and the dominance of those prepared to be most ruthless.
Anarchy is presumed to result in a violent, indulgent rich
exploiting a barely subsisting poor.

I ask: Is Modern FreeMarket a type of Economic Anarchy?
And can we expect the same types of results from economic anarchy as we can from social anarchy?
We now have record foreclosures at the same time as record profits for banks.
Is this the economic equivalent of Social Anarchy and the dominance of the ruthless?
Have we simply substituted physical violence with economic violence?
And (in a world where everything costs money) is there any difference?

In short..yes.

Some people die inside when their livelihood is taken.
A bullet or a bank..makes no difference.

Yeah, freemarket anarchy is not far removed from social anarchy.

A free market that is driven almost entirely by the short-term profit motive, with the big and powerful able to swallow up smaller competitors and become bigger and powerfuller, is a recipe for disaster.

Big companies that operate in countries where labour is dirt-cheap and quality of life is miserable, and sell stuff in developed countries, are competing unfairly against stuff manufactured in countries with decent wages and quality of life.

Companies that are based in tax-havens and who fail to pay anywhere near their fair share of tax in countries where they sell stuff or compete with domestic entities are again operating in a very unfair manner.

And of course all of this continues to work strongly against the imperative to stabilise, if not considerably reduce, impacts on our resource base and environment, and achieve sustainability.

No, the free market economy, without strong governance that is completely independent of the profit motive, is just going to continue to suck wealth out of the pockets of the poor and load up the already obscenely rich and powerful, and eat our future!

Social anarchy is bound to result.

Question – rather than a free market, who regulates the market which is allowed, because, with no market, the economy stops, depression ensues and what was established to preserve what we had ends up destroying everything.

Now the great myth of big business versus small business.

Most folk in Australia and Japan as USA and Europe do not work for multinationals.
They work for small to medium companies.

The great thing with small to medium companies is, when they are swallowed up, new ones replace them. The best example to illustrate this is the beer industry.

In UK, beer manufacture went through a cycle of centralization, where economies of scale financed acquisition of small breweries by big companies. However, after a few years of consumers getting sick and tired of homogenized beer, CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) evolved quickly followed by the development of boutique breweries.

Similar things happen in Australia, Red Back Brewery for instance.

Parallel events are occurring in bakeries. The domination of Sunicrust etc. is being eroded by individuals opening boutique bread shops (actually a pressure for this, so I am told by someone in the industry, the cost of distribution increases means; bulk ingredient delivery to devolved points is cheaper than bulk ingredients to one point then transport of finished loafs to second devolved points).

A free market produces these outcomes and whilst far from perfect, recognizing we have the ACCC to review and regulate where some abuses might occur.
The price we pay in regulations, starting with a bureaucracy which expects to be paid and more importantly the centralisation of authority and power in the hands of those bureaucrats and rapidly leading to reduction in choice over a free market, the worse for all of us.

"Free Market Anarchy" is a preferred option to "stagnation through regulation".

Who does regulate the market which is allowed to operate
in this country? Us or the World Trade Organisation?
Once upon a time, tarrifs and subsidies were the only
things supposedly standing in the way of free trade. It
is disturbing that the WTO considers almost everything, including
all public ownership of infrastructure and services such as health,
education etc as "barriers to trade" which it is constantly pushing to have removed.

In my area, a good 75% of the workforce are employed by multi-nationals. They conrol between a third and one half of all global
trade, so to say that most people in industrialised countries
don't work for them(which may be correct) is greatly understating
the amount of power and control they posess.

The question is not whether to regulate or not. It is to what
degree to regulate. If micro-breweries and small bakeries are
sucessful, it is because of regulations that allow them to set
up shop without the big boys squeezing off their supplies of malt,
yeast and so on. A true free market implies an absence of such regulation. Everything would be owned by the big boys, except that which was deemed unprofitable. The idea of consumer free choice
under such a system seems pretty far-fetched to me.

“The question is not whether to regulate or not. It is to what degree to regulate.”

Absolutely

“If micro-breweries and small bakeries are successful, it is because of regulations that allow them to set up shop without the big boys squeezing off their supplies…”

That’s for sure

“A true free market implies an absence of such regulation. …. The idea of consumer free choice under such a system seems pretty far-fetched to me.”

Totally agree Fozz

A free market if ever one truley existed is anarchy to a point until it results in cartels and monopolies. A free market can only be short lived because of this and also because a free market is inefficient as its major contribution to society will always be market failures. Privatisation of public utilities is a good example of this and the avaliability of bird flu vaccine.

The Redback Brewery came into operation in 1989. The following year, after a very brief independent life, it came under the control of Carlton and United Breweries Limited who had purchased Brewtech, whose assets also included the Sail and Anchor Pub Brewery and the larger Matilda Bay Brewery at Nedlands.

Carlton and United Breweries continued to operate the Redback Brewery until late in 1999, and during much of this time the brewery was used for the production under licence of Stella Artois.

I just wonder how people who abhor everything connected to and stemming from one type of anarchy (social anarchy)justify advocating another type of anarchy, particularly as they have rejected anarchy as rottern in fundamental principle and so no good could possibly come of it. Any anarchy hating free marketeers out there care to don the gloves?

Fozz “big boys squeezing off their supplies of malt, yeast and so on.”

Anti trust, contracts in restraint and monopolies and cartel legislation and case law has been around for well over 100 years.

Suggestions that a contract to ensure a vendor of supplies refused service to a buyer at the behest of another buyer would contravene that legislation.

Whilst the recent US FTC efforts to address the near monopolistic power of Microsoft seems to have met serious resistance, the US FTC has had great success in breaking up other monopolies and monopolistic practices like the oligopolistic control of pricing and supply of which funeral homes had in provision of funeral services and articles (eg caskets).

Similar legislation was enacted in UK from which Australia drew its precedences.

You will recall the massive fines imposed on the suppliers of concrete in Queensland following the uncovering of a price cartel there.

One concern I have with government businesses and why I do not believe government should be running any commercial undertaking is, they invariably exist with benefit of a monopoly environment. Example, the breaking of the old PMG / Telstra monopoly illustrates how telephonic service users are better served by multiple players in the market rather than being hostage to a monopoly supplier, which is more focused on satisfying the demands of its employees than delivering competitive service

Telephone services are crude compared with the potential the technology is capable of. Deregulation of telecomunications is a good example of a sectorial failure. Competition has led to near monopoly, service cost inflation, wasted resources, fluctuating and inconsistant quality and market failure. The free market has only one winner , the operator who happens to by luck get out of the market before the market declines. The consumer cannot benefit in the long term in a free market environment because the service will inevitably collapse thereby making the goods unavaliable. The market will initially offer goods lower than true value to destroy competition then the market will always inflate costs.The survivor has to recoupe losses to survive longer. Profit is the most inefficient economnic activity and the free market depends on motivation to profitise. Resource wise the free market is the most wasteful because the imperitive is short term survival and dependent on over night cost cutting which usually results in quality decline shortening the life span of the enterprise. Added is the materials source which is doing the same thing and so inflation is amplified.
Fortunetely there is no such thing as a free market , it is just rhetoric to justify policies which have only short term advantages and high risk failure.

The major problem is that the function of money has been perverted by our financial institutions.Money is the medium of exchange for goods and services,store of wealth,etc,but it has now become a commodity in itself,with its own power and momentum,that can distort the true needs and wants of the people who produce tangible wealth,hence economies are found wanting because of the one sided power of global capitalists.They do not see that the really true wealth is an educated population that don't live in the slavery of sweat shops or mortaged to rapacious financial institutions.

Unfetted Global capital is making us all, very uncivilised.I think it is time to think locally and buy back our jobs,dignity and community spirit.Lots of money sooths our insecurities,but does not foster social cohesion or give us a sense of worth.

There is no country that has followed a complete free market ideology and has been successful(Virtually no government other than law enforcement, little or no regulations, etc. Basically a libertarian dream). None of the experiments have delivered better standards of living.

Somalia is an example of a state with a weak central government - Complete failure.

Argentina privatized pretty much everything a little while back - Failure. The economy collapsed, poverty rose to 50%, and is now down to 25%(I think, havn't checked). Still above pre-privatization/de-regulation levels.

Chile's experiment was forced upon the population with the point of a gun(Hardly freedom that libertarians blabber on about), and while has resulted in greater economic growth, has also resulted in greater levels of poverty and falling real wages for most of the population. Much of the growth that was achieved was after some of the privatizations and changes were reversed.

The best emperical results come from a mixed economies with state intervention and the free market. Extreme forms of government don't work. The communist system is a failure, so is the libertarian model. Anything that blames all problems on one thing (Capitalism or Government for communism and libertarianism) is a weak simplistic model that is doomed to failure.

Bobalot is absolutely correct. The argument for a free market is basically we want sunny days so we throw out rain coats and umbrellas. The problem with ideology is that humans can only contain one abstract thought at a time and even by drawing up matrices and tables there is no way of including chaos into the ideology. I think freemarket ideology as has been implemented in the Australian context is unique from other ideologies. The freemarket is not only sold as an economic panacea to make all people well off, communism has the same argument.The free market is a 'be all and end all' ideology. Where as other ideologies are processes of revolution, the means to a goal- the free market is the goal. When the freemarket inevitably fails there is no light at the end of the tunnel , indeed some escape options become extinct.
I wonder if the dominance of the freemarket ideology has anything to do with the doom outlook of many these days. Closing hospitals neccesitate cheaper witch doctors and faith healers. Industries become extinct creating localised hopelessness and market failure polarises entire communities. Social justice degrades, governments become irrelevant and so justice breaks down.

Actually this Globalisation movement is really no different from Communism.It gives too much power to big business and that enslaves us all.