david_z

well there's no free market 'god' and nothing will solve all ills. but generally I'd say yes. It is amazing what people can manage by working together, when left to their own devices.

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HoboMaster

I don't have a steady job atm (taking 17 credits) but I would say I live off of less then $8,000 a year right now. It's an interesting lifestyle, you have to have extreme self-discipline because society is constantly trying to tell you being frugal is wrong. I have been marked by several people as "the most frugal person I have ever met". I don't eat out, ever. I don't buy anything that isn't essential to basic survival. I spend less then $150 a month on food. For entertainment I do things that cost nothing or almost nothing - thankfully that coincides with outdoor recreation (once you have gear).

While the fight to take back power/wealth distribution from a ruling class is something I fully support, I still feel like everyone needs a crash-course in conservation and sustainability - and the recession has actually made a lot of people do this. Over-consumption on any level will not be a reality in the long-term future. Having the ability to put the breaks on and live within your means is an important skill everyone should have - but just because people on the lower end of the chain need to reevaluate their lifestyles, doesn't mean those at the top are justified (lewl,Herman Cain).

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PowderHound and TreeNinja

david_z

Can we be friends?

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snowjeeper

well yeah I'm sure I lived off of 8k a year also as a college student - not including tuition and whatnot. Life is a little bit different when you're a student.

snowjeeper

that's so idealistic it makes me constipated.

CheeseForSteeze

Care to explain how instigating more regulatory controls, which favor and further entrench the current corporate-facist state, would help solve the problem?

Any special rules you make them play by whether be reforming the tax code or be they trade commission imposed mandates might hurt the big banks, financial service institutions and entities that provide brokering/clearinghouse type functions, but it hurts their small business competition even more. Then, the bigger institutions have an army of lawyers who can figure out ways around it and the small guys are left playing by the rules and have an even greater handicap. This is giving them a de facto monopoly/oligopoly.

These attempts to close the loop holes just create more rules for them to find loop holes in. This idea that any one man or team of men are smart enough to somehow plan and guide the economic activity from some sort of centralized consolidated point is nonsense bordering on the likes black magic and voodoo.

Go ahead and make more rules for them to play by, they will end up using them to their advantage. If the people making these rules were even a fraction as clever as the people exploiting them, they wouldn't have to resort to getting a job as a politician.

Sick-Pow

No, wait for Jack Abramoff, fascism's poster child.

snowjeeper

The free market is bullshit, that's why it won't work. There's no such thing, and there never will be. Even if we started from scratch, a few huge companies would still hold all the power. You think having no regulations on business would protect small businesses? Keep on drinking the crazy kool-aid.

david_z

Why? We're starting from scratch in this hypothetical. There wouldn't be any huge companies to hold all the power. First they would have to become huge and historically this is only really accomplished via government subsidies, protection, captured regulators, special legislation, etc.

You will need to explain how companies could get so powerful in a free market (i.e., atomistic or nearly-perfect competition, rents & transaction costs are minimal, in which labor & capital are unhampered).

It's no more crazy than the belief that more regulations on business (enacted by the government, owned by big corporations) will actually protect us from big corporations, rather than further cementing their oligopoly.

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snowjeeper

Have you studied history at all? All what you've said has already been proven false.