Trigger words: free market (6)
Indicator sentences: So am I to understand that when you are talking about the "free market" you are talking about when the private interests controlling a government are corporations rather than individuals?
Negotiation parts: The free market is when the government is not involved. If so, I would point out that most artificial scarcity is not at the behest of corporations. Sure, corporation/government collusion causes some harm in terms of the diamond cartel. But noncorporate government-induced artificial scarcity takes the form of the Holodomor or Zimbabwe's engineered famine. So even with this weird definiton of the "free market", the free market causes ~0% of the problem of artificial scarcity while non-market forces cause the other ~100%. Okay so let's step back into my way way back machine before policies beneficial to individual groups were instituted at a state level. What you have at that point is the full free market. Now, through the operations of this free market, certain groups through free market principles become wealthier and more powerful than other groups. This is to be expected in the free market. Then what happens is these groups use that power and authority, to influence state policy to be more favorable to them, thereby curtailing the free market. So here's the train of logic - In the free market certain groups through shrewd business and strong practices outpace other groups -[STA-CITE]> this makes those groups more powerful economically and therefore more powerful politically -> these groups then use that economic power and therefore political power to encourage policies favorable to them and not others -> the free market is quashed. [END-CITE]A condensed form of the argument is - free market -[STA-CITE]> unfree market. [END-CITE]My position is that the free market, by itself is incapable of solving for that. The free market is internally self-destructive and leads to an unfree market, and the free market has no internal ability to correct for that.
Trigger words: free market (21)
Indicator sentences: Define free market. Your using examples from today and in the food, drug and diamond industries no less, which bother me. The farms restrictions and subsidies, drug and gene patents, and African diamond warlords are not my examples for free makrets.
Negotiation parts: Okay, now to go back to something I've already said, I think this is getting back into no-true-scotsman territory. One of my criticisms of the free market is that it inevitably leads an unfree market. Groups, through free market tactics gain a large amount of economic wealth and therefore political power and then use that power to influence the market in their favor. This is one of the problems with the free market that I think the free market can't solve, unregulated markets historically lead to regulated markets with regulatory policies that favor specific groups over others. That's one of my criticisms. Saying that once this happens "it's no longer a free market then" not only fails to address my criticism, but as I've said elsewhere, renders the free market as a theoretical construct that is permanently safe from criticism. What I mean by this, is that if the free market becomes corrupted by a free market actor (like a private corporation) that's not an invalidation of my criticism, but *evidence of it*. In other words, the free market is inherently self-defeating and always moves towards a lack of freedom in the favor of particular groups. It would only be no true scotsmen if I rejected the freest industries(like the tech industry); and you still havn't defined what you mean by free market, meaning I can't show how these industry have little to nothing to do with the free market or that your definition is flawed.(or be proven wrong, but....) Is it the free market that imposes these restrictions? I would argue the state is a cancer in society and when its ready to grow the capitalists in a good position, move themselves to avoid its harm, not that they cause it to grow. But thats a chicken or egg problem.
Trigger words: free market (16)
Indicator sentences: I want to call, as others here have, for you to define "free market".