pbergin:

You haven’t told me your guarantees yet.

The following is an honest question, based purely out of curiosity from a fellow market anarchist.

Is it the established ideology here that, under the conditions of a true free market:

* Coercion through economic power utilized by economically powerfull entities would be justifiable, or at least ethically acceptable?

* Or that such coercion would be naturally stifled to the point of effective negligibility, and thus irrelevant for consideration?

* Or is it the generally established maxim that, without the ability to use direct physical force through an external agency such as the state, economic leverage is inherently devoid of the capacity to be used coercively.

“* Coercion through economic power utilized by economically powerful entities would be justifiable, or at least ethically acceptable?”

Whether it’s justifiable or not is really pointless. Using coercion of that magnitude would be a heavy expense for any economic power. And one has to come to the conclusion that unless a cartel exists this organization is either a government or a monopoly that is already suffering from diminished product quality and bloated operational expenses. Bottom line is a private economic power will not be able to leverage itself over the influence of others like a state can because people are alloted freedom of choice indefinitely. Even if Microsoft considers themselves successful in their propaganda campaign to force Vista onto it’s market base you will always see folks freely moving to alternatives like MAC/Linux/Sun. Assuming no abuse is done in the way of private property such coercion usually will bring less returns because the cost that went into the campaign was so high.

* Or that such coercion would be naturally stifled to the point of effective negligibility, and thus irrelevant for consideration?

exactly

* Or is it the generally established maxim that, without the ability to use direct physical force through an external agency such as the state, economic leverage is inherently devoid of the capacity to be used coercively.

Typically speaking only the state holds the power of force. Now there are some clever market scheme’s out there that may strongly and unfairly influence the purchase of a certain goods(Usually when government grants special privileges) but ultimately the consumer has the choice whether or not to do without. Direct force is not used. It may be that it’s not impossible for private business’s to discover some indirect way of force, the difference is people have more direct control over these companies by choosing to boycott their product. You cannot boycott the state, you may trick yourself into thinking you can change by swinging from one corrupt party to the next but fundamentally you cannot really make a huge impact in the accountability of your government.

RE: Joe Stoutenburg

Joe Stoutenburg wrote:

"[...] You haven’t told me your guarantees yet."

Joe, I am talking about precisely that – the lack of thereof.

If the ultimate end-result of “pure” Classical Free Market theory is, essentially, Communism, resulting from the merger of powerful economic elites and holders of coercive power, then how can libertarians, or other strong proponents of classical Free Market theory claim that their solution is any better, except for postponing the inevitable?

The burden of proof lies on the strong proponents of the Classical Free Market Theory to demonstrate that their principles, and the theory they profess, if adhered to in its entirety, will, indeed, result in a better world, as it is intuitively understood by the overwhelming majority of human species…

To give you an idea where I stand on the whole Free Market Issue:

I am a proponent of a modified version of the Free Market System where the minimum levels of vital economic quantities are enforced through restriction laws by the designated coercive power: such as minimum wages or minimal environmental pollution laws, or laws that would prevent monopolization of a certain industry, or extreme social and economic polarization of the society, etc.; I am a strong proponent of Free Market competition driven by selfish motivation of the participants, in terms of gaining profits as part of their pursuit of happiness, as they understand it to be. In short I am a proponent of classical separation-of-powers principle with very weak Executive Branch (Central Government, if you will) with the bulk of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers given to the much smaller locales comprising a particular geo-political entity. I am NO anarchist in this respect, since I believe in minimal State acting as a designated broker between various socio-economic groups…

Hope this answers your question…

-pbergn “What most libertarians do not understand is that the most pervasive problem in all human socio-economic affairs, much like in many other fields is the problem of unrestrained growth, such as unrestrained monopolization of economic power, or unrestrained growth of political power, or unrestrained growth of money supply or unrestrained growth in resource consumption, etc, etc…”

No we understand it quiet well and are very aware of your concerns and have addressed them for century’s. Your idea of unrestrained growth is flawed. Fundamentally you will eventually run out of resource in which to grow with. This apply’s in natural sciences as it does in other sciences. A tree therefore cannot grow 1000 feet tall. Nothing can continue to grow without consequence. We can only grant special privlages to those firms whom we allow in our government. Whether it be via lobbying or some other manner of corruption.

-pbergn ” What many seem to disregard is the fact that what can start as fair and balanced competition, if let run unrestrained, will grow out of proportions, and ultimately destroy the balance of comprising entities.” What fact is this? I’d like an example. I doubt you will be able to site any real world example to defend this previous statement. Right now you sound like a politician justifying his next bailout package. -pbergn “This is precisely what is happening with unrestrained consolidation of many private much smaller economic entities under the corporate umbrellas,”

This has happened due to consolidation of assets from large bankruptcies. The root cause is the result of a very credible theory known as the business cycle which was kicked into gear in the early 30′s and escalated several times since. Especially after the dot.com bust. This relocation of assets is actually a healthy move in the economy and will help neighboring business’s get additional capital. If we assumed your natural monopolistic theory was true we wouldn’t see see the big dogs fail and swallowed by the small dogs. Instead it would be reversed.

-pbergn “David, I sincerely disagree with you on the fact that it is the government interference that creates those giant corporations, and inhibits the competition. I think it is the nature of Free Markets itself to create a handful of winners,”

Actually in most cases David is correct. The difference between you and him is David can site examples, you have no concrete evidence to support your argument. Now that said, monopolies are completely capable of existing in a free-trade society. They usually run in a degraded mode making it very easy for competition to enter the market. Monopolies typically offer poor quality at high cost. Consumers don’t like this and thus incentive for competition is created. Would you like a real world example? You need look no further then Microsoft. I am making no judgment call on this company, only that recent products from them are of degraded quality at higher prices. Since they are desperate for sales they create other products which push incentives on consumers to upgrade. Unhappy with the quality or the preference of older products many consumers are looking elsewhere. This can be represented in the expansion of the open-source market and other software firms like Sun, Google, ect…

pbergn that, then, if left unrestrained, would ultimately disturb the balance of political and economic power in a certain geo-political local or in the world, in general…”

I would argue that with less political power you have less economic power you have. Your flaw is that you think there needs to be a balance. If you want less corruption in private industry take away the tool by which they receive this power, shrink your government. I have a personal theory that corruption in Government and private industry’s are more or less correlated. The solution is shrink your government and make it ethical. Enforcing private property rights.

Crosson wrote “FYI to your minimum wage laws all they do is harm the people they’re designed to protect. They increase un-employment, raise commodity and living prices among other things.”

As currently implemented, they do all those things (although there are other ways of getting there that don’t do them, like the approach of Professor Kim Swales and his colleagues, which I have also described here). But they do not harm the people they’re designed to protect (the low paid), they help those and hurt other people who don’t even get to be low paid.

Yeah, but why bother with a military when a simple “You’re fired” ususally works? Of course any worker who persists on coming into work finds that force can be arranged.

“The truth is that workers in a corporation choose to be there because they prefer this to the available alternatives.”

However the available alternatives are artificially constrained. While some workers might like corporate hierarchies, others would prefer to be self-employed or work in a co-op.