The death of neoliberalism from within • Hacker News Board

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#101

Post by ende » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 3:56 AM UTC

Bombthecat wrote: post #27

elgabogringo wrote: post #13

Neoliberalism is not a school of economic thought. It's not an actual ideology that anyone associates themselves with. It's a word without any concrete meaning thrown around in order to avoid real discussion. The free market is not failing. Current markets that are failing are hardly "free." What is failing is a system of government regulation and control that supports wall street and the rich at the expense of the m…

And removing the government would give the rich 100% control. So what would be a solution?

The rich are the government. To limit government is to limit the source of power of the rich.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#102

Post by generj » Sat, Jun 04, 2016, 7:40 AM UTC

andrenth wrote: post #95

generj wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Tribes/Feudal Lords ARE government, albeit often not effective/efficient government. 2) You'll find that in an anarchy situation, mysteriously there is some market governing force...like a tribe, or guilds, or even just a shared understanding of how the market/society is to function. Even mob justice is a sort of governance, and the definition of what the mob will allow before uprising is the law of the land... 3)…

> Free markets by definition require things like homogeneous products and perfect information. Perfect information has never existed in a conflict zone, and it never will. This is so absolutely wrong that I'm curious from which reference you got it from. The very reason free markets work is because of heterogeneous products, allowing for competition, and for the fact that perfect information does not exist. In a free…

I'm conflating free markets with perfectly competitive markets. If that's incorrect, I apologize - still learning econ. Really, I'm saying that the closer a market is to a perfectly competitive market or at least a monopolistic competitive market, the closer to a free market it is.

In my head this makes intuitive sense as clearly oligopolies and monopolies aren't free markets. If free market refers exclusively to non-centrally planned market then my understanding is very flawed.

I thought the entire point was that with heterogeneous products, there is less competition, as the goods are subtly different - enough so that sometimes they are actually in separate markets. Companies who are seeking to minimize competition typically do all they can to differentiate their product - that's marketing 101. In a monopolistic competition, there is heterogeneity, but it's curtailed by a homogeneous demand between these options - e.g. restaurants.

As for perfect information, I should clarify I'm talking only about price information on the part of the consumer. Without listed prices, its hard to make rational decisions. A combat zone doesn't have good information available on prices, which could vary greatly between locales.

If you look at markets with low profit margins, they tend to have homogeneous products with perfect information on prices - for instance, commodity markets. As the best possible outcome for consumers is for a market to have zero profits but competition to drive costs down. And I know that perfectly competitive markets are only theoretical, but I'd argue that the concept of a free market is only theoretical as well.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#103

Post by wfo » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:19 AM UTC

vixen99 wrote: post #67

wfo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Profit motive above all else is literally the prototypical example of an ideology, just not one that most people would publicly espouse.

No, it's one that everyone and all life espouses. All human interactions are transactions which express this 'ideology' as you misleadingly call it. Eric Berne understood this in 'Games People Play'. You transact because you get value; you profit. Only dead people don't transact which is why we dispose of their bodies. The profit motive is why we're alive and why evolution of life on this planet has arisen. It's deep…

A beautifully expressed fundamentalist ideology; you are incapable of even comprehending that there exist views other than your own.

Re: The death of neoliberalism from within

#104

Post by wfo » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 4:23 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #60

wfo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it is an explicit ideology that many associate themselves with (though not by name, since it's become something of a slur because it's so obviously religious about the "free market" and hated because of this). It's explained clearly in TFA. Of course, the classic rabid libertarian answer -- any time any economic failure happens, blame regulations. When we free the markets, and the markets fail to provide an…

Noam Chomsky, that rabid right-wing libertarian: What’s called the capitalist system is very far from any model of capitalism or market. Take the fossil fuels industries: there was a recent study by the IMF which tried to estimate the subsidy that energy corporations get from governments. The total was colossal. I think it was around $5 trillion annually. That’s got nothing to do with markets and capitalism. https://…

In fact, Chomsky often argues most markets are not free because of the massive teams of trained psychologists who work in propaganda -- i.e. public relations, to try to ensure capitalism does not work correctly, by misinforming consumers and making sure they act irrationally, at odds with the healthy behavior of a market.

So yes, it's not capitalism, but idealized capitalism is a ridiculous impossible goal that doesn't really exist because the market incentivizes people with power to subvert and destroy functioning markets.