At the moment, Ron Paul is trying to just get it audited. Even that’s a fight. Whatever you think about private acts being regulated, I can’t understand being less than outraged at the lack of oversight and regulation of the Fed.

Rephrasing your points as I understand them…
—All market participants must be informed or they will be taken advantage of by the informed market participants. Since it is impossible for all market participants to be completely informed we therefore need government regulators to step in and protect them from the evils of the “free market”. The government regulators are preferable because they can take action quickly and stop any informed market participants from taking advantage of the uninformed participants.—

In my original question I was hoping you’d give me a better answer than the market “moves too slowly” (in so many words…). The market has many forms of self regulation. In each sector of the economy there is going to be a small number of very informed and scrupulous consumers who will, can and have repeatedly found wrongdoing in the market when government was completely silent and often approving of the wrongdoings (Enron and Madoff for example). The businesses have the built in incentive to provide the best products at the lowest price possible to consumers or they’ll lose market share…unless of course they are able to get GOVERNMENT bailouts or special GOVERNMENT regulations or even special contracts with some other GOVERNMENT supported industry etc. As long as an industry has free entry into the market then a business can’t fuck up or it will lose big time to some new hot shot entrepreneur. Free entry into the market (as far as I can tell) is NEARLY ALWAYS inhibited by government in some way or another and I’ve yet to see even a remotely good example of a supposed “free market monopoly” running rampant and taking advantage of consumers.

—You also touched on the ability of the market to sniff out “bogus” products and eliminate them.—

The more bogus the product/service is the faster the market finds them and eliminates them. This job is made increasingly difficult when government intrudes and places it’s official stamp of approval on bogus products. Especially since those same government agencies were put in to protect and regulate markets…so when the FDA puts its stamp of approval on a company or the SEC says Bernie Madoff is legit, suddenly the market gets careless and corruption is allowed to enter the picture. The government is almost never the one to actually uncover people who are committing fraud in the market, it’s almost ALWAYS the market itself that finds the ones committing fraud because it’s in their best interest to know if the company is unsound or committing some sort of fraud, or putting goat shit in their product. Naturally it’s just as important for competitors to expose companies that are committing fraud in order to remove that unfair competition from the market.

concerning you point on the immobility of labor relative to the mobility of money…

I honestly fail to see what that has to do with anything…Are you trying to say that labor is less mobile and because of that it hinders the ability to have a free market?

Maybe im just completely missing the boat again.

Here we still have all that child labor, no overtime rules, zero workplace safety rules, companies are allowed to dump their toxic soot into whatever waterway is nearby, etc. etc. Yes, our whole world looks exactly like the industrial hellscape of 1800 robber-baron industry.

Idiot.

In a free market economy the system is self regulating because too much greed is self defeating. In the end, the consumer wins.

Some of you are confusing corporate cronyism for free market.

Never mistake the answer for the problem i.e. Government.

““Market” is a theoretical construct. There is no such “thing” for real.”

The same can be said for the words ‘nation’, and ‘government’, and ‘law.’

“Applying your terms, I see that theoretically there can be no free market.”

I think you’re confusing a free market with one where there is no asymmetric information and transport time is instantaneous. And when that’s not possible, you say there is no free market.

The problem of ‘informed’ buyers and sellers gaming the system is taken care of by laws prohibiting things like collusion, monopolistic behavior, and insider trading.

If you think about it, a free market *can’t* exist without the proper regulation. Without laws regulating it, a market probably won’t be free.

If you don’t like a certain regulation, does that mean the situation is OVER REGULATED or more precisely, mis-regulated? Is the solution to remove the subject being regulated or is it to modify the regulation so that it has greater utility?

Example: Lets not allow free market farmers to put pig shit in our food. Lets make a rule requiring clean shit free food. Who is offended by this regulation? Now, if the rule is you cannot have any shit at all, and laboratory process can find one microgram per trillion parts, effectively, all food is contaminated and none can be sold. Is that over regulation calling for removal of the ban on shit in food, or is it mis-regulation calling for a modification of one part per million shit in food?

When you argue for “no regulations” / free market you are arguing for shit in your food. Silly, and it gives you bad breath.

I DEFY you or anyone else to give a single example of “over regulation” (other than outright banning as with drugs) that doesn’t actually mean mis-regulation.

“Why would a whole bunch of “informed” market participants avoid the conditions of a free market?” /// You have garbled my point which is that in order to be a free market place worthy of any contemplation, the participants must be informed. Otherwise, you have a marketplace but it has been captured by the unscrupulous as the other participants are not informed as to their malignant motives/effects. ((Just what our current meltdown has demonstrated.)) I think you will find “informed” in many variations of the definition of a free market. To that end, correcting my post, “fair” is very analogous to “free”– just not always. A free market is not one that is free to lie, mislead, misinform, cheat, steal etc. You can use words that way if you wish, but its not consistent with that other free markeplace==the one of ideas.

I reject the unstated assumption of your question–that bootleg products should be “legal” and part of the market process with buyers protecting themselves ONLY by slowly over time identifying the bogus goods and “choosing” to not deal with that vendor. Takes too long. No reason to allow such manipulations to exist. Regulate the participants, what they say, how they do business. Otherwise you don’t have a market, you only have a free for all.

The analogy is a good one: basketball. Without rules fully enforced, you cannot play basketball. There is NO GAME if you can hold the ball, punch, tackle and so forth. Its playing within the rules that actually makes the game. No rules, no game. Same with the free market.

On your last point, regarding the immobility of labor, YES, you are missing the point. Not “missing” it so much as using your skills to avoid the obvious point being made. Such manipulation invites a snark, but I’m in a pedantic mood and I’m still coasting from the good will of your first few lines. Its fine to use your skills to disagree. I sense you know what I mean when I counsel you to use the same skill set to see the validity of what I posted, then contrast that position with the special circumstances you advance, weigh and contrast, make your own conclusion. At the end of the day, a dollar can be instantaneously wired transferred while bodies need biological support while being moved around with much greater effort==ie, don’t argue against the obvious.

That’s EXACTLY what happens then gas prices go up and some lone gas station that isn’t ran by a franchise decides to drop prices for a while so he can empty his underground tanks and let the tanker trucks fill up those tanks so he can raise the fees on that gasoline on the next go around.

Aside from the fact that regulation creates artifical costs be it by taxes and/or product price increments, regulation cannot be created as a substitute for lame regulators, be it naturally incompetent or otherwise.

A balance should be had between free market & regulation.

All they are now is a Drop shipper, and package handler. If a hired person cant fill 100+ orders a day, he gets fired.
They have only 1 problem. BAD products, and BROKEN stuff. To many BAD products can lead them to UPDATE prices. But considering there is a 400-600% markup..that shouldnt happen.
AND then I wonder whats the reasoning behind GAS going up in price. I dont see one.

Wow, it’s a very rare occurrence to see you respond to someone without using any name calling or belittling/snarky/sarcastic remarks. It’s a lot easier to take you seriously when you show some respect to who you’re responding to.

Couple questions regarding your post.

Why would a whole bunch of “informed” market participants avoid the conditions of a free market?

Also, how does living on the east coast prevent you from taking a day job in the west coast, regardless of ability or practicality? For instance, someone may prefer to live on the east coast and a really high paying job allows them to take a plane to commute to their job on the west coast. Of course, if the job isn’t high paying enough they couldn’t make this work without going bankrupt. Still, this doesn’t stop him from being able to move to the west coast to get a job, people do this all the time. Therefore labor is able to move freely and is only bound by the free market regulation. Or am I missing something?

“Market” is a theoretical construct. There is no such “thing” for real. Yes, there is an aggregations of individual transactions–but still a construct. Does the market mean that all participants know all the other terms and conditions of the transactions going on? ie–add “informed” buyers and sellers to your definition. And once you add “informed” what you get is a whole bunch of people trying to avoid those conditions of a free market leading to – - – - rules and regulations.

As to labor and capital moving freely, isn’t lack of labor mobility, if you must then as compared to capital, one of its hallmarks? If I live on the East Coast I can’t take a day job on the West Coast, but the money transfers quite easily. So yes, I accept your terms.

Applying your terms, I see that theoretically there can be no free market.

Your advocacy then for a free market is for what purpose?