Posted: May 04, 2013 8:17 pm
Strontium Dog wrote:Macdoc wrote:I really detest the term free trade as there is no such thing as a free market either - the latter is an oxymoron.
It's not helped by the fact that there seems to be several competing definitions of "free market". When I talk about a free market, I mean a market in which competitors are free to operate, where barriers to entry are low and nobody can rig the game. When Leftist critics talk about a "free market", they seem to believe it's a market that is entirely free from regulation, a laissez-faire free for all in which anything goes. I think the latter is a straw man that doesn't really exist outside the wet dreams of anarcho-capitalists or the nightmares of socialists.
Seems to me that "leftist critics" often think a so-called "free market" is "entirely free from regulation, a laissez-faire free for all in which anything goes" because this is what advocates of a "free market" usually mean and often prefer, people like Ron Paul for example or the deregulators of the Tea Baggers who, for example, voted in the House to disband the EPA.
A regulated market is by definition not a "free market," is it?
Your condescending attitude aside, it appears to me you've missed what free marketers actually want. Hell, they don't even want government, let alone government regulations, "Our goal is to reduce the size of government so that it can be drowned in a bathtub,'.is an infamous mantra from the right.