MenKlash

I’d prefer the term statism, but I agree with you.

Economists of the classical school were right to define a monopoly as a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting. Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even the attempt should be regretted since it is a great benefit to consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function. The term “monopoly price” has no effective meaning in real market settings, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change. A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas.

Amazon is just another big company that benefits from corporatocracy.

Okay, so you admit you have no idea how economics work.

You’re not even trying to counter-argue my argument.

Conscription is slavery.

It doesn’t matter if everybody is drafted, it won’t change that fact. I think the problem is the existence of the so-called war, that is, mass murder. Who are the ones behind of all that coercion? The state.

Conscription should be abolished.

You dont understand economics at all if you dont understand how all free markets naturally devolve into monopolies.

I’m a “follower” of the Austrian School of Economics, although the idea that monopolies are government-grant privileges was first originated by the economists of the classical school (and they were right).

Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even this should be regretted since it benefits the consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function.

The definition of a monopoly by the idea of “monopoly price” has no effective meaning in free-market setting, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change.

demand is manufactured by misleading and manipulative advertising and marketing.
It’s driven by planned obselesence.

Consumer products develop through experimentation. Consumer preferences also change and develop gradually through time. To meet them requires entrepreneurial judgment.

Nor is buying essential items like food and utilities voluntary.

Aside from a few innate demands concerning hunger and temperature, consumer preferences emerge as a result of interaction between many individuals.

Each consumer regulates the consumer products he consumes by spending money. There is no good substitute for the market process concerning the development and dissemination of consumer goods.

You cant have a free market without a government enforcing anti monopoly laws.

A free market is not free at all if the government is stepping in any voluntary exchange.

The existence of “anti-monopoly” laws has caused more harm than good by protecting particular competitors, not competition. In fact, monopolies can only survive through government-grant privileges, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a free-market setting.

“A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas.”

I’m really meant it. Saying an argumentum ad hominem is pretty childish for my taste.

Touch some grass, please.

Better it goes into government so at least people can vote to change it.

We can’t change it. Politicians would still have their monopolical powers because they help each other. Don’t trust the government. Billionaires not only influence it, they also receive help from them.

I can vote the State, I can’t vote the CEO.

You vote for certain politicians, other people vote for other politicians, and whoever wins, the tyranny of majority will emerge. The success of the CEO is dependent of supply and demand, if there are no monopolical privileges. (I discussed this in another reply).

That’s the citizens job, not his.

Following your logic, the citizens voting him is a perfect clue of this, am I right? Otherwise, I agree with you about what Milei will do with his powers. I don’t trust 100% any politician, even him, but he’s the only one who explicitly showed that, like donating each month his salary (funded by taxes) and not funding certain political campaigns.

Again it’s the citizens that dictate that. I can vote for people wanting to build something in the State, not a CEO that wants to build a highway for the goodwill of mankind.

Citizens has no direct influence in the process of decision politicians make. The CEO (at exception of lobbyists) wanting to build a highway is: using his own factors of production achieved by social-cooperation (capital, land, technology and workers) and his desire of providing it emerges by supply and demand, by competence in a free-market setting and the economic calculation of consumers in a system of prices.

Nobody wants to be the “bad guy”

Sorry, but I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me here. Read about the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.

Every “work flexibility” I’ve ever seen pitched is just code for turning people into wage slaves.

Leaving aside the exact policies of Milei about this (as I’d prefer no policy at all), any governmental intervention in labor markets will cause unemployment among less productive workers. The term “slave” is not valid because those workers voluntary agreed, in a contract, the amount of money they’d get to do certain job.

“Wages represent the discounted productivity of labor in satisfying consumer demand. Demand for consumer goods translates into demand for workers.”

It’s just that every time I’ve seen someone purpose breaking the system to make it better, they just want to break the system so that they can profit.

Fair enough. Distrust in politicians is perfectly logic and ethical, but accusing him of fascist? It does not make any sense.

Because we voted for them.

The fraud of representative democracy. What about those who didn’t vote them (the tyranny of the majority)? We, the common citizens, have really any power if our vote is secret?

The rights and obligations of a contractual act are generated by explicit consent of both members. This does not happen when we our vote is completely secret, without our names and surnames. Politicians are free to impose their monopolical powers, even if we don’t choose them.

“Representative democracy is the illusion of universal participation in the use of institutional coercion."

We didn’t vote for the board of directors of private companies.

Because we shouldn’t. Except for the lobbyists, they are using their private property and their factors of production achieved by social-cooperation.

There’s plenty of waste and corruption in private enterprise. It’s not voluntary if they lie cheat and steal just like bad politicians.

The only difference is that, in a free-market setting, they wouldn’t have any monopolical privileges to mantain their economical power and reputation in the market, as their permanence is dependent of supply and demand.

Taxes exist because public goods are actually good, and benefit everyone.

Taxes raise money for transfers to special interests and public employees. Why would you trust an oligarchy of politicians (the State) to decide which goods are useful “for a community” and which don’t?

In contrast to private businesses that supply the goods that consumers voluntarily want to buy, public officials lack of the capacity to pick data as to what people truly demand, much less how to go about meeting those demands economically. They don’t have direct feedback of what every individual in the community want; they don’t pass the test of economic rationality.

If the Monopoly of Violence can’t act economically, they have no other choice but respond to interest groups, so tax money will necessarily end up with narrow interest groups rather than the provision of “public goods”

The sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts.

The end does not justify the means. The mere existence of taxation is detrimental (and antithetical) to the very source of economic growth, that is, voluntary exchange.

Goods like education and roads, for example, are goods like any other: they can be supplied by markets and markets alone.

The only privilege we need is a better community.

A better community will be formed if it’s achieved by voluntary means. Moral obligation is not the same as legal obligation. How can individuals be virtuous? By letting them act freely.

Economic inequality being one of the biggest drivers of democratic back sliding.
Shitty part is that authoritarian doesn’t really offer anything better.

Hey! Let’s solve “economic inequality” with more statism! That’s not authoritarian at all!

Obviously, wanting to reduce the monopolical privileges of politicians, public spending and taxes (robbery), erradicating the central bank, increasing work flexibility and advocating for individual rights and liberty is fascist af. Believe me, guys!

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You mean all these private international businesses have a hard time going around worldwide regulations?

Quite the contrary; the State by lobbying, subsidies and “international aids” is actually benefiting the giant businesses, as the coercion made by the State harms the SME’s and we the common people to trade with other countries.

Basically, I’m describing corporatocracy (the State is dominated by corporate business interests).

Do you know, that even with the sanctions, russia exports and imports (almost) as usual, because internationally nobody cares? And if sb cares, they will make a daughtercompany in no time which does the trade?

By “russia exports and imports” (fallacious use of collective nouns), I’ll interpret it as businesses affected by the sanctions.

As I said before: “Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics”. You can’t just infere those sanctions are not working from having analyzed statistics and economic history. You need first an economic theory that tries to explain how the economy works by identifying the causal relationships between economic actions and events.

I’d recommend you to read about Mises’s Human Action (praxeology based on methodological individualism).

Man wtf. We had over 100 Years of almost free market and look where we are now.

I don’t know what you interpret as “free market”, but the mere existance of a Monopoly of Violence, lobbying, manipulation of money, state licenses, blah, blah, blah… is not free at all.

Businesses in germany have to pay a fuckload of taxes and still get richt as fuck.

Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics.

If there is no free market on a national scale, than there is a almost anarchytical free market on an international scale.

What about protectionism, tariffs, special licenses, international regulations, “common goods”, the World Bank Group, the IMF, and very much any kind of coercion made by “Welfare” States?

And they have to pay back what they destroyed. Like everybody else, when you destroy sth, either on purpose or without, you need to pay.

“Virtually all issues concerning the environment involve conflicts over ownership. So long as there is private ownership, owners themselves solve these conflicts by forbidding and punishing trespass. The incentive to conserve is an inherent feature of the market incentive structure. So too is the incentive to preserve all things of value. The liability for soiling another’s property should be borne by the person who caused the damage. Common ownership is no solution. Because national parks, for example, are not privately owned, the goal of economical management will always be elusive.”

the people can rise up against the capitalists to stop them from poisoning our only habitat we are all wholly dependent upon

Are you ignoring all the labor these “capitalists” and their workers do to provide you the goods we all wholly demand upon? All of this is done by social cooperation between both of them by voluntary association.

We can stop the self-destructive madness of demanding infinite growth carved out of the ass of a finite world.

This would work if the price system would actually work as intended (free from the intervention of the State) to distribute all the scarce resources in a free-market setting.

Greta is doing the right thing in the face of Armageddon

By wanting the Monopoly of Violence to step in? To call the international organizations (spoilers: they don’t care about us) to intervene in foreign countries?

Almost everyone else will either continue begging the sociopathic oligarch polluters to stop

They can actually do that because of the existence of “common goods” and of the monopolical privileges granted by the same State, such as subsidies, regulations discreetly affecting SMEs, the lack of enforcement of private property to protect those “common goods”, etc.

but those are usually the same people that get angry at others for claiming the “free capital market” isn’t the cure for the many self-inflicted human crises caused by the “free capital market.”

On the contrary; they love subsidies, they love intellectual property, they love FIAT money, they love the monopolical privileges: basically, their activities depend entirely on the mere existence of corporatocracy.