Generally they just don’t, but I look fondly back at the funding activities of the 19th century philanthropists who built lots of the very fine schools around me here in London.
Thing I don’t see now is bankers doing the same. Far more important to get the latest Ferrari leggere.
Let’s hope he gets that bottom nail out first. Ouch.
“there has been no ideological competition to the free market doctrine” REALLY? How about the psuedo capitalism that is found in the United States which should better be called Fascism or better yet Corporatism. How about the Socialism still prevalent in many European Countries? Communism is still the bread n butter in China though free market principles have even weezled their way into Red China.
Free Market Capitalism is often twisted in today’s world and the meaning is lost. Freedom is at it’s core. The freedom to choose what one will do with one’s labor, capital and resources. With that freedom comes consequences but it means the individual is FREE.
This is one of the most basic of Human Rights and Desires. The ability to determine our life and exact our will. It however does not mean we can exact our will at the expense of others.
The pope hits on some good points but they are not the result of true Free Market principles but rather the distortion of Capitalism…Cronyism…Corporatism…Fascism.
Men are mean and under any economics system may in fact with to exert their will upon others.
I think this article is a good representation of the basis of Free Market principles:
Blistering irony blisters?
But if not? Best mime, ever.
Yes. That is exactly how I would characterize it - ‘Corporatism’. And that is by no means a nationalistic thing.
Some years back, I worked on a historical research project on the Titles of Nobility Amendment to the US Constitution. Although held to have not been ratified, it actually was. Putting aside any of the various wild conspiracy theories and such you may have seen surrounding the history itself, That Amendment’s entire intent was was to provide penalties for violating the wording already provided in the Constitution (and before that, in the Articles).
The exact penalty was loss of citizenship. Up until that point, if you so much as claimed benefits for military service, Congress had to issue the order individually. If you wanted to work for a foreign government you also needed explicit permission from Congress. But probably the most dramatic effect of the sorry comedy of errors that left the Amendment listed as unratified is the fact that international corporations would not have been capable of claiming rights here.
And if you digest that notion for just a moment, you’ll see what radical effects that has on both the US and international economies. Someone though a company wouldn’t damage its own market for a profit - and others thought that lame. But…what if you couldn’t just do the damage and then run back to your headquarters in some other country? Not covered in that Amendment, but even better yet - what if corporations were not allowed legal personhood at all? (I do not mean a legal inability of people to pool capital or make joint ventures - but strictly the civil rights being granted to corporations.)
Then what? Because now - each person is directly responsible for their own acts again. Sure - you could form political and business lobbies - but you wouldn’t be able to hide your personal identity quite so easily. It would be more difficult to form a ginormous business capable of hiring quite so many wage slaves - but is that really a loss, when it simultaneously leaves loads of room in the marketplace for individual entrepreneurship? And yes, that comes with risk. I might out-compete you - but fat chance I could out-compete a Walmart. But, you could get laid off at Walmart when the economy suffers another meltdown, too.
Yeah, yeah - I know. As if! Point is, if you do nothing more than ponder that scenario for a bit - you see pretty quickly it hardly matters which style of government of economic philosophy you like to hang on what we do have, because it isn’t driven by the name tags you hang on it. It’s driven by the power of incorporation itself. I can form a corporation tomorrow and do dozens of things under its identity that I couldn’t, shouldn’t, or flat out wouldn’t do as myself. Couldn’t - because suddenly, I can claim your investment assets as ‘mine’ corporately. Shouldn’t, because personal risk on that order of magnitude would be stupid. Wouldn’t, because even if I didn’t possess the moral or ethical compass to say no, the consequences would come to me - not that fake legal personage. And because of those facts, any argument as to whether industry is, or might be capable of moral or ethical behavior becomes pretty much a moot point - along with any argument that industry is innate good or evil just because it lives within some idealized and theoretical philosophical framework somewhere.
Still - a handy tool for getting straight on how and why things keep falling apart on us. If the pope’s message was that personal responsibility overrules corporate flag-waving…ok. I can roll with that idea.
Then what?
Catholicism is one of the world’s oldest brands. They’re not stupid. They know they can’t count on winning the intellectual fight; the chances of another Spinoza are pretty low. The pedo scandals have worn out their reflexive moral authority too.
A policy of compassion and resistance to perceived rapaciousness is about all they have left if they want to stay relevant to anyone. It’s a credit to them for recognizing it, even if it only turns out to be lip-service.
So, what happens when the WalMart/General Electric Land Holding Consortium owns the land surrounding my house and then asserts their property rights to keep me from trespassing? Even if I’m free in some abstract sense, am I not basically a serf at this point?
Note, this isn’t corporatism. It’s just two very large private entities asserting their property rights. Government does not enter the picture, except to defend WM/GE’s right to prevent me from trespassing, which most libertarians would consider a valid role for government.
What’s with the strawman argument? Okay I will bite:
Number 1: It’s highly improbably anything like this would occur in reality due to zoning laws. You think your local village wants WalMart, GE and Residential zoning like that? Hardly.
Part Tres > So you built your house in the middle of nowhere. Without any roads leading up to or from your home. Then you proceeded to sell (or your neighbors) sold every spec of land around your home right up to the edge of your lawn. Now you’re a fucking SERF! ZOMFG! DIG A FUCKING TUNNEL SERF.
Letter 4: This was a DUMB example which would likely never occur in the real worldz so you got an equally dumb reply.
From Me. Love you! Kisses and Hugs!
In the vatican they don’t have to google stuff like that. All they have to do is go into the archives and pull, say, the Borgia files.
Nononononono, that could never happen. Rational Markets and so forth, doncha know…
In other words, it was a dumb example that would never occur in reality, because reality doesn’t leave markets completely free. A strong endorsement to be sure.
What zoning laws? Zoning laws are government interference. Likewise, public roads. They’d be sold off (or, more likely, given away) to private entities.
And you’re going to build the jetpack out of shit you have lying around in your house?
I was referring to Libertarianism, under which there are almost no rights except property rights, for which my example is completely valid. If you’re just arguing for smaller government (what populists call “libertarianism”), then fine, ignore it.
The rhetorical point, in case you missed it, was that when you define rights as nothing but property rights, you can get some pretty pathological outcomes, just like when people defined rights as nothing but collective rights. My example is an extreme case, but not impossible. Yes, it is far-fetched, but so is big-L Libertarianism. There are many milder examples, which I’ll leave to your imagination.
For the billionth frikken time. “Free markets” don’t exist unless you want slavery to exist. Actual literal slavery. “True Scotsmen” free markets can’t exist, because any imposition on the market, however reasonable, negates the existence of one. The instant you start imposing even the most reasonable restrictions, you start a bargaining process we over here in reality-land call “regulation” and “politics”.
In short, my position is that the platonic “Free market capitalism” is inherently unstable and usually degenerates into cronyism and corporatism as soon as the successful early entrants accumulate sufficient wealth and influence to control the political discourse.
Your statement drives home the point that “free markets” perhaps don’t exist as much some political figureheads would suppose. There is so much intervention, regulation and meddling in market forces by government entities that it probably is inaccurate to call them free markets at all.
Free Markets can exist without slavery - in fact they should exist without slavery.
But they can’t exist where slavery is not legal.
You are stating that in a truly free market that slavery should be allowed to exist. However I differ in that true free markets do not support slavery because it is inherently anti freedom; which would be the core of free markets.
Your argument is akin to saying that free markets can’t exist without murder, rape, theft etc because a “free market” can’t truly be free if we don’t allow individuals to have slaves, murder at will, rape whomever they please and steal whatever they like.
Now you’re changing the accepted definition of free markets. Free markets are about freedom from the imposition of rules and regulations on the market based on the idea that markets best govern themselves. Never mind that all freedoms are negotiable on any planet that does not have an absolute morality. Don’t believe me? Just ask people whether we should have the freedom to own guns. Better grab an umbrella too, because there will be a shitstorm.
What we do when we makes laws and regulations is (ideally) an attempt to reach a consensus about what freedoms people should have. Freedom to own slaves? Na, seems kind of anti-freedom. Fine. What about the freedom to pollute the air that everyone has to breathe? Is that an absolute freedom? The idea that one person’s freedom stops where another person’s begins is a quaint way of describing a very complicated concept. Philosophically, the term “free market” is about as meaningless as an argument about whether a plane can take off from a treadmill: Because getting people to consistently agree on what exactly they mean by “free market” is impossible. No two people have the same idea or conception of what a free market looks like, and the inevitable consequence is that no free-market advocate is ever satisfied that a free market exists no matter how little regulation there is.
