Comments on: I Don’t Know the Answer http://www.ultimateminority.com/2008/12/30/i-dont-know-the-answer/ Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform - Mark Twain Sun, 30 Oct 2011 05:21:23 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: DM http://www.ultimateminority.com/2008/12/30/i-dont-know-the-answer/comment-page-1/#comment-24 DM Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:45:44 +0000 http://www.ultimateminority.com/?p=148#comment-24 Hi Bob, Thanks for the post. You are correct that free markets are not problem free. As Dr. Deming was fond of saying, perfection is not for this world. The two main issues I would touch on regarding problems in the market are: 1) That as a free individual, there is good news and bad news - Good news: You have unlimited right to contract. Bad news: You have unlimited right to contract. This means that individuals have a responsibility to make informed exchanges. Using government to "protect" people from exchanges that (in hindsight) didn't benefit them makes people lazy and dependent on government for their protection, and inevitably the government fails them. The free market can and would do a better job of providing consumer information and a system of checks and balances that help individuals make informed decisions. 2) Crime and corruption will always exist. Free markets are swift and judicious in dealing with crime and corruption. A player in a free market, doing wrong by others, will quickly lose his place to competition. When governments are involved, the corrupt players use the government to enforce their criminal control through protective legislation and government granted monopoly privileges. Regarding morality, government is the primary source of immoral behavior in a society. Government steals from us and calls it taxation, and encourages us to fight for our share of the booty. Government divides us into groups and races, and pits us against one another. Government puts our young people into involuntary servitude and calls it "conscription," sending them to foreign countries to invade, occupy, and kill innocent individuals in the name of "protecting us." Re: the derivatives market - always remember that it is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that produces the "cluster of errors" in the market, causing otherwise rational money managers (in this case) to make irrational decisions to capitalize on the "free money" going on and creating the temporal disallocation of investment in the economy. Hi Bob,

Thanks for the post. You are correct that free markets are not problem free. As Dr. Deming was fond of saying, perfection is not for this world.

The two main issues I would touch on regarding problems in the market are:

1) That as a free individual, there is good news and bad news – Good news: You have unlimited right to contract. Bad news: You have unlimited right to contract. This means that individuals have a responsibility to make informed exchanges. Using government to “protect” people from exchanges that (in hindsight) didn’t benefit them makes people lazy and dependent on government for their protection, and inevitably the government fails them. The free market can and would do a better job of providing consumer information and a system of checks and balances that help individuals make informed decisions.

2) Crime and corruption will always exist. Free markets are swift and judicious in dealing with crime and corruption. A player in a free market, doing wrong by others, will quickly lose his place to competition. When governments are involved, the corrupt players use the government to enforce their criminal control through protective legislation and government granted monopoly privileges.

Regarding morality, government is the primary source of immoral behavior in a society. Government steals from us and calls it taxation, and encourages us to fight for our share of the booty. Government divides us into groups and races, and pits us against one another. Government puts our young people into involuntary servitude and calls it “conscription,” sending them to foreign countries to invade, occupy, and kill innocent individuals in the name of “protecting us.”

Re: the derivatives market – always remember that it is the Federal Reserve and its inflationary monetary policy that produces the “cluster of errors” in the market, causing otherwise rational money managers (in this case) to make irrational decisions to capitalize on the “free money” going on and creating the temporal disallocation of investment in the economy.

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