[gruez]

>The closest to this ideal that’s ever happened was during the Islamic golden age enabled by religious prescriptions against usury.

How does are bans against consensual financial exchanges close to the "ideal" of the free market? It just sounds like you have an axe to grind about the financial system rather than describing free markets.

[asdf88990]

Usury and debt based economy creates a dynamic where being competitive in production is secondary to financialistion.

In short, instead of market being driven by demand and productivity, it is driven by financier curving out monopolies.

Peak Examples are Uber and AirBnB.

[gruez]

What makes this view more correct than say, "economies with marketing creates a dynamic where being competitive in production is secondary to marketing" and concluding that nothings a free market until we ban all advertising? After all, you can make a vaguely plausible argument about how marketing isn't really about the merits of the product, and therefore allowing it is antithetical to the free market or whatever

[majormajor]

> What makes this view more correct than say, "economies with marketing creates a dynamic where being competitive in production is secondary to marketing" and concluding that nothings a free market until we ban all advertising? After all, you can make a vaguely plausible argument about how marketing isn't really about the merits of the product, and therefore allowing it is antithetical to the free market or whatever

Wait, so your pitch in favor of a debt-fueled market economy is that advertising is awesome and that we wouldn't want to "lose" being smothered in ads all the time?

Cause... sign me up for the non-financialized, non-mass-media-advertising-driven economy please and thank you. I'd even be ok with just nuking billboards and mass-media forms of ads and still allowing more direct forms of marketing, if we must compromise! Likely we could find some compromises around just how much of the debt world we regulate too (this should be obvious?).

(I thought the disconnect between the efficiency of competition and the market as realized in modern economies was pretty well understood and taken for granted, but I guess we all find ways to justify the system we're profiting from... even if that means we have to claim we love the ad breaks)

[gruez]

>Wait, so your pitch in favor of a debt-fueled market economy is that advertising is awesome and that we wouldn't want to "lose" being smothered in ads all the time?

The point is that if add random caveats to what counts as free market, it won't be "free market", only "market I like".

[asdf88990]

Marketing isn’t free for starters.

Second, marketing can take you only so far compared to the subsidies possible with financialisation.

The West is in a state of psychosis with Debt and Monopolies under the illusion of free market.

The Chinese markets are more free than West, you can just look at the Auto and AI industry.

[SR2Z]

I'm flabbergasted that you look at the Chinese property crisis and say "only the West does irresponsible loans." No, 60% of China's economy is state-run companies and the remaining 40% need political officers. China is just as capable of making shortsighted decisions as the US, and they have already made several devastating ones.

[majormajor]

>I'm flabbergasted that you look at the Chinese property crisis and say "only the West does irresponsible loans." No, 60% of China's economy is state-run companies and the remaining 40% need political officers. China is just as capable of making shortsighted decisions as the US, and they have already made several devastating ones.

While these are hardly shy claims, I don't see anything in them to say "only the West does irresponsible loans"?

> The West is in a state of psychosis with Debt and Monopolies under the illusion of free market.

> The Chinese markets are more free than West, you can just look at the Auto and AI industry.

or the prior post

>Usury and debt based economy creates a dynamic where being competitive in production is secondary to financialistion.

> In short, instead of market being driven by demand and productivity, it is driven by financier curving out monopolies.

> Peak Examples are Uber and AirBnB.

You can throw a rock these days and find a category where the products coming out of China are miles ahead of those coming out of the rest of the world, from a bunch of companies nobody had heard of a few years earlier. And the list is growing pretty steadily.

I would assume plenty of shortsighted decisions are also being made. But I would have a hard time characterizing the state of competition in the west as healthier or more productive when looking at the number of players and the quality of goods being produced in China.

[likeclockwork]

state-run corporation are bad but corporate-run state is good?

[asdfsa32]

You seem to only affirm the GPs psychosis commentary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacture...

vs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufacture...

Financier want monopoly so use usury for Consolidation. Monopoly bad because no free market. Free market good. consumer happy. citizen free.

[wqaatwt]

No access to capital can and does constrain supply to a very high degree.

[asdf88990]

Capital will not be hoarded and stuffed in pillows without Usury. People are happy to take bets for profit and loses, I mean, that is like the entire stock market schtick.

[wqaatwt]

I don’t exactly see how the modern stock market is superior based on the (moral not economic) criteria being discussed in this thread?

It’s even more speculative and detached from productive behaviors.

[SR2Z]

...except Uber STILL faces competition, and I went back to hotels after finding AirBnB too pricy.

It is good and proper that people aim to create monopolies, as long as they want to do that in a productive and legal way! Monopolies are inherently dangerous, but the truth is that acquiring and maintaining one is not straightforward unless you can get the government to ban your competitors.

[bigfudge]

Even if these companies monopoly falters after IPO the disruption and distraction to a focus on producing can be a problem.

[digitaltrees]

Expand. I am typically against hard money gold bug libertarian arguments but your description seems interesting and I am open to being persuaded.

[m-ee]

Debt creates debt crises. Throughout history it’s been a major function of any government to resolve these. Notably this function predates any concept of a market in the modern sense. For the most part markets were created by fiat by the government for its own purpose (usually supporting its armies) rather than springing from the ground organically only to later be regulated.

I’m not advocating for Islamic finance, it’s just a funny artifact of history that the closest thing to a “free market” unfettered by government interest, did not happen in the “western” world most of its advocates come from.