We had a discussion over at Bob's the other day about the word "free market", which I think has been unfortunately twisted into a synonym for "libertarianism".
I had a similar experience recently. So on facebook I saw one of those suggestions on the right hand side that I should "like" Capitalism because many of my friends like it.
Sure. I "like" Capitalism. So I clicked "like" without even thinking much of it.
Turns out what I was actually liking was more or less a Fox News type stream of news updates. It wasn't even a somewhat nuanced libertarian take - it was pretty straight conservative stuff.
Ironically enough, no updates dealing with economics at all that I've seen. All politics updates. Kind of funny, huh? I saw my first update that actually tangentially dealt with economics this morning. The title? "Scumbag Krugman".
Orwell is alive and well, folks. I'm quite sure I like capitalism more than whatever dumbass writes that stream.
Friday, August 3, 2012
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I don't like the term 'free market' as it has this absolutist ring about it and markets are odd sorts of things to be "free". The appropriate boundaries of markets is, after all, a different question than their internal operations.
ReplyDeleteWhat people seem to mean is something like "in favour of capitalist acts between consenting adults". Or, if you like, free commerce.
A market is just a network of exchanges. So a free market is a network of free exchanges. How is that absolutist or different than your preference for free commerce?
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