A deliberately vague question on economic philosophy

[The Traveler]

Lurking freepers, feel free to jump in.

Is the common good best served when nations are organized to support markets, or when markets are organized to support nations? Or is it best to consider nations and markets seperate but symbiotic entities equally vital to the common good?

Here's a "limit test" kind of question ... If for some reason, Americans had to choose between preserving the union or preserving free markets, which choice would be the best and why?

[jobycom]

1. Ow, my head hurts. But

My stupid answer is that there is no difference between the nation and the market. Without the state to regulate the market, coin money, set standard weights and measures, and create the rules under which trade is carried out, there is no market. There is subsistence, with some barter, and much cheating. If you have an economy above subsistence, the traders in that market will create a set of rules, laws and standards if they don't already exist. In other words, they will create a state so the market can function.

There is no "free market" separate from the state in which it exists. The state and the market are products of each other.

The common good is defined by the people, and varies depending upon what they want and need, so the balance between nations, markets and common good depend on the goals of the people.

Limit test answer: the market,the economy, in America is defined by the state, which was created to protect the market. So the choice can't even happen.

[The Traveler]

3. I think those are pretty good answers

Here are my thoughts on them:

"there is no difference between the nation and the market. Without the state to regulate the market, coin money, set standard weights and measures, and create the rules under which trade is carried out, there is no market. There is subsistence, with some barter, and much cheating. If you have an economy above subsistence, the traders in that market will create a set of rules, laws and standards if they don't already exist. In other words, they will create a state so the market can function."

Not necessarily true on first principles. Anarchistic systems, for example, would rely on markets to regulate themselves and do away with the concept of nations or governments. Other methods of organizing production and exchange of goods and services are certainly conceivable, though their ability to promote the "common good" would be debateable. Still, there is some symbiotic relationship between nations and markets even in the era of globalization.

Litmus test answer: The circumstances demanding a choice can happen, though I think that the circumstances would be so dire so as to preclude the likelihood of either choice working out well. Something like massive ecological collapse or global thermonuclear war or something.

I asked the question because it seems to me that despite the symbiotic relationships of markets and nations there are obvious tensions between their interests. For example, it is in the interests of profit centers to dismantle environmental regulation. But that is contrary to several interests of the nation.

Thanks for playing.

[jobycom]

9. But you said it

"Anarchistic systems, for example, would rely on markets to regulate themselves and do away with the concept of nations or governments. Other methods of organizing production and exchange of goods and services are certainly conceivable, though their ability to promote the "common good" would be debateable. Still, there is some symbiotic relationship between nations and markets even in the era of globalization."

key words: "regulate themselves." Anarchistic systems would not function. Rules would develop, and some means of enforcement would develop, within the market, as you say, so the market can regulate itself. That's my exact point. The market would form the state if it did not already exist. There is no such thing as a free market.

Read our Constitution. It is as much an economic as political document. It establishes who can make laws on money and standards, it establishes what those laws can and can't do. There is no such thing as a free market-- a state has to exist for a market to exist, no matter how rudimentary either or both are.

That's not to say that states can't ruin markets. Bush and Reagan are proof of that. But that's a different discussion.

[tech3149]

2. deliberately general answer

Any economic system that doesn't support all who must use it is not sustainable. An economic system must support consumers and suppliers or at some point one side of equation the will tip the scale to make the system non-viable. This is my simplistic viewpoint and I'm no economist, so take it for what it's worth.

edit: stupid grammar

[The Traveler]

4. I'm not an economist either

So the answer seems credible to me. The proper balance must be maintained for healthy operation of the system. One might legitimately ask if we have tipped the balance too far to one side in recent years, methinks.

Thanks for chipping in.

[tech3149]

15. I only started waking up before

Stupid White Men came out (had a readrs copy), by March 2003 I finally woke up. Since then I've been suckin up everything I could find to stay informed. In so many ways, I think we're screwed. Even if we take political power back in the next election cycle, it will take decades to dig out of the hole we're in now.
I hope y'all can grow your own food and live close to a small community that can be self-supportive.

[idlisambar]

5. The second choice

Ideally markets should be configured in such a way as to serve a society's economic interests. Much of economic thinking is designed around the opposite -- organizing society to be consistent with the neo-classical notion of "the market".

[The Traveler]

7. Seems to be reversing priorties

It seems to me that a market is a tool of sorts ..."we work to live, not live to work", etc. Early markets allowed for specialization of function within social groups, improving the group's living conditions thereby.

[followthemoney]

6. Markets exist outside of the state..

Only fiat currency exists within the state. That is the value a currency has under law. When the state disappears its currency is worthless.

Markets exist outside of law, outside of the state. Examples are drugs, slaves and other commodities declared illegal within the state. These markets exist independent of any state.

The common good is not generally a concern of the market, but should be the concern of the good state.

The "litmus test question" presents a false choice. State do not free the market but limit it in various ways. States, without exception, harness the energy of the market to support their own interests.

I believe it is possible for a state to regulate the market to serve the interests of its citizens, where the state and its citizens interests coincide. There are, although, scarce examples of this occurring. This is a somewhat Utopian goal worth working toward yet only with eyes open to unintended consequences.

[The Traveler]

8. Not litmus test question

LIMIT test. A limit test explores behavior of systems under extreme conditions. Those conditions are often unrealistic ... think of it as a thought experiment.

So let me reframe the question with an example. Markets produce power structures which are often at odds with nations. Presume a situation where the power structures of the market directly threatened national sovereignty and legal rights of citizens. Should the nation bow to those structures, or should the nation destroy them and impose tighter restrictions on markets to limit concentration of power? At what point does such a decision become necessary?

[followthemoney]

10. The nation will suppress the power of those structures it is...

at odds with, unless, as John Dewey says in his "The Public and Its Problems", the government is merely the shadow cast upon the public by business. Under these extreme conditions the market structures and the nation do not exist as separate entities. therefore no either/or decision is possible.

[The Traveler]

11. Your logic is almost inescapable.

Still, I am determined to try. :)

[Selatius]

12. Nations and capitalistic markets are built on coercion and force

The only reason capitalism survives is through the enforcement of property laws. This is why the RIAA is sueing teenagers and the elderly when they download music. Those laws were passed by the state. To be a capitalist is to be in a state of ownership over some resource that others need to survive as well. An example is owning a property or several so that you can charge people rent even though you only need one property to live in and shelter yourself from the elements.

The state is an artificial construct. We are not divided by national boundaries but simply by language and geography. That's all. We all are people who simply want to make a living, find happiness, and raise families. It is the state that tells us what to do. It is the state that tells us to send our children to die thousands of miles away, and it is the state that has been used to exploit people in other parts of the world who have the misfortune of being poverty-stricken.

Your question is a non-starter for me for the fact that I reject both if I was actually empowered to choose between the two. People can and always had the power to save themselves if only they would come together, cooperate, and do it directly, but it just takes time to open people's eyes to the power they have that the state and the capitalist have insisted the whole time they never had.

[followthemoney]

13. Hear! Hear! eom

[The Traveler]

16. You are nibbling at where I want to go

But it is clearly not about power ... it is about motivation. Why do people surrender power to the man, in whatever form the man takes? Because they cannot imagine doing otherwise, or it is just not worth the hassle to them, or because they are afraid, or ... the list goes on.

The point is both "the state" and "the market" are human inventions, tools, methods of organization to address a range of requirements. Are there not other methods of organization that can be invented? Does commerce require that there be a loser in each transaction?

Perhaps we cannot imagine better solutions to the problems of organizing human effort on a large scale. Fine. Does that mean we cannot improve the implementation?

I have a certain emotional attachment and faith in capitalism, but over the past ten years or so I have become increasingly aware of its mighty failures. In particular, "free markets" have been unable to produce solutions to, for example, the problems presented by dwindling energy resource, peaking energy demand, global warming, and other implications of operating a high energy technology civilization. These matters were dramatically drawn to the attention of America back in the seventies when we all lined up for gas.

We've had decades to work on this, and damn little has been done. My faith in free market economics is therefore greatly eroded.

[Selatius]

18. It sounds like you're trying to awake from the system

You've seen how the world works. You know how the machinery operates, and it appears you've grown disgusted with how it works. Would I venture to guess you've gotten to the point of rejecting it entirely but have not yet crossed over?

Your question about there always being a winner and a loser is one that really got my attention. You're really struggling against the system here.

Why must there be a loser? "It's the way of the world," they say. There has to be losers because the best should win. This is the best system possible. Those who win deserve the rewards, and the losers deserve their fate.

I rejected that years ago. There is another way that has yet to be tried. Why not mutual cooperation instead of endless, destructive competition? It would make more sense, and everybody wins in the end. Just because people have been trying to beat each other into the ground to see who the winner is since before I was born does not necessarily mean it is the only way, but there is nothing in the existing order of things that could answer my questions.

I wondered about this for years, and then I looked outside and elsewhere and discovered the basic principles behind socialism. It was a reaction, the antithesis of what capitalism stands for and represents. At least in principle, it advocated mutual cooperation and economic equality, not gross inequality and endless competition. The only problem has been implementation. The most well known example is the USSR, a gross and catastrophic failure in humanitarian respects.

The problem was who gets to decide "what is best" for everybody. Naturally, people like Stalin wanted to decide for everybody, at the point of a gun. As a result, you ended up with a system that was as authoritarian and brutal as the system it replaced. That's not progress.

The question you asked is why would people give up their own power. Why would people elect someone else to make decisions for them that they themselves are perfectly capable of making themselves, especially if it has direct impact on their very lives?

The most common answer I've found was simple practicality. The convenience argument. It is impossible to have a Congress made up of, say, every eligible voter in the US. It's simply impractical as a way, but what I would say is that you don't need one giant, awkward, unwieldy assembly but, rather, a confederation or coalition of many smaller, much more easily manageable community assemblies of citizens directly making decisions that affect their lives. Instead of it being on an artificial national level, it would based on much more real and manageable regional and local geographic levels. In such a structure, power would emanate from the bottom-up, not the top-down as in a traditional state model.

The second argument is that people were simply born into such a situation without having any choice on the matter, much less education to adequately decide for themselves. For many people, they have known nothing but the existing order, and they don't push for change because they've never known anything better. People are taught to fear change, to stop asking questions, but human nature is a force of nature, and it cannot be held back forever. It breaks through. It finds cracks, and it comes through eventually.

I wanted to combine a form of governance that is much more direct and independent in nature and an economic system built on mutual cooperation and equality, and the result after careful contemplation is that I finally came to realize I was a libertarian socialist.

It took me several years to think things through, but this is where I currently am, and it's probably where I'll be until I die of old age or until I'm killed. I don't know if this is the way for you. I'm not going to push it on you. You've got to look at it yourself, study it, and make your own choice. I can only offer some of my thoughts, but ultimately, you have the power to decide the direction for your own life. It's your life, afterall, not mine and not theirs.

I'm sorry for the long-winded post, but it seems you're quite serious, so I thought it deemed a serious response.

[welshTerrier2]

14. a quasi-deliberate non-answer

it should not go without debate whether nations should exist at all ...

if the primary objective of nation-states is to promote groups of people in one nation above groups of people in other nations, perhaps the whole idea of national borders should be eliminated ...

[The Traveler]

17. Agreed ...

My intent has been to kick the door open. Are the methods of organization we have adopted the only ones we can conceive?