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It is, but it's a distinctly different branch of thought. Why are you being so stubborn?

Look, free market capitalism was based on the works of people like Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Bastiat, and then followed upon by people like Friedman (although a monetarist, yet another branch), Hayek, von Mises, Sowell etc. Neo-mercantilism was championed by the likes of Keynes and is based on government intervention in the markets, just like the days of the East India Company; Tariffs, taxation, regulation.

free-market, Austrian school, neo-mercantilism, monetarism, would you like any more keywords to search on wikipedia to enhance your education?

Jay wrote:

It is, but it's a distinctly different branch of thought. Why are you being so stubborn?

Look, free market capitalism was based on the works of people like Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Bastiat, and then followed upon by people like Friedman (although a monetarist, yet another branch), Hayek, von Mises, Sowell etc. Neo-mercantilism was championed by the likes of Keynes and is based on government intervention in the markets, just like the days of the East India Company; Tariffs, taxation, regulation.

free-market, Austrian school, neo-mercantilism, monetarism, would you like any more keywords to search on wikipedia to enhance your education?

lol wikipedia. i spent most of 4 years writing on various modes of capitalism you idiot. you clearly do not know what a humanities degree entails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern … Capitalism

you don't wear the 'learned arrogance' well, because you went to a shit school and are the bottom-rung of intellect on this forum. so please drop the artifice.

both are forms of capitalism. both have the same basic organizing principle of production and labour. both dictate a certain level of political system/structure in order to operate. they are part of the same branch of post-industrial western government. if you think that smith and mill are really that far away from the mercantilism of their day, you are an idiot. not 'neo-mercantalism', which you have nicely loaded with lots of political bias (as usual), but basic mercantilism. the early formation of free-market thought was part of a dialectic process with mercantilism and domestic industrial development. do you know what hegelian dialectics even are? because you are clearly not grasping the simple concept here, poindexter.

you have an engineering degree. i have a degree that actually encompassed the study of economics, history, and politics. so drop the stupid 'gaps in your education' crap. it's risible.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-03-19 13:16:00)

I have the flu.

French minister in charge of battling tax fraud forced to resign for having a secret Swiss bank account

AussieReaper wrote:

This is how

Government created monopolies!

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

Jay wrote:

I have an engineering degree with a minor in business and two years towards an MBA. You have a degree in English Literature. Don't try to pass it off like you had intensive study in economics. You read books and wrote papers. So impressed.

2 years towards an MBA and you don't regard mercantilism as a form of capitalism? LOL

I don't place it in the same context as free-market capitalism, no. It's in the middle ground between marxism and free-market capitalism.

Spearhead wrote:

Jay wrote:

Spearhead wrote:

Ayn Rand "free-marketism" is about as impractical and ridiculous as "communism".  It exists in theory, until you realize that states do exist for a concrete reason and they are powerful and they are not going away anytime soon.  Say what you want about social spending/new deal programs, don't pretend as if JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are honest brokers in the world economy.  I think 9/10 people now believe bailing them out in the first place was a mistake.  The real question however, is how did we let them become so large.

This post made you look completely ignorant. Free-market doctrine predates Ayn Rand by 150 years. Ayn Rand has very little to do with libertarianism.

The rest is regurgitated claptrap.

Your post makes you appear condescending, as usual.  The point of my post, and using quoations, was that Ayn Rand's philosophy IS NOT a real free market.  There is no such thing as an absolute free market.  "Ayn Rand has very little to do with libertarianism" lmfao

You didnt address the most important part of my post.  Read one sentence in a paragraph, insult them, move on.  Reading comprehension ftl.  Having a conversation with you about this stuff in real life must be unbearable.

I insulted what you wrote because it was a mishmash of American left wing talking points.

No, Ayn Rand was not a libertarian. She was more of a market anarchist and the basic premise of her philosophy was completely flawed. She tried to portray capitalists as Nietzschean supermen that descended upon the world, did all the work, and deserved all the rewards. Nevermind that everyone gets help along the way (Obama was correct in this), and that none of her supermen were capable of running their businesses singlehandedly. She completely tried to sever any attachment to society.

Libertarians do not think this way. They recognize and understand that if you're going to have a free society, it means we're all dependent on each other to keep the peace and not try to fuck each other over on a constant basis. What good is a free market if there's no one to trade with? Libertarianism is mostly about pushing decisions that affect us down to the lowest possible level so that we may influence the things that have an impact on our lives. It means that things like how a local school is run should be left up to the locals to decide (hence the calls for the destruction of the Dept. of Ed.). It means that as long as you're not having a negative impact on the others around you, there's no reason to put limits on your behavior or coerce you into making certain decisions. That's all libertarianism is: love of personal freedom.

"Let them become so large?" They became so large because it's what the government wanted to happen. They were given a trillion dollars via TARP and they bought each other out. Where we had twenty large banks, we now have eight or so. Instead of having to bail out the other twelve, they gave the big eight money to absorb the hit themselves. It's easier for them to regulate and keep tabs on eight super banks than it would be for twenty, but hey, you're the type that wants them to be as heavily regulated as they are, so there ya go.

They are so heavily regulated that they have been continuously found at fault, charged and accused of faulty and risky business practices, then given large sums of money and not held accountable for their actions. Damn regulations!

A large chunk of those companies consolidated pre GFC

Shahter, rule number one of capitalism is "make a profit". Profit and greed are the only motivations to move up in life and innovate and succeed. We'd all be a pile of goo if not for glorious capitalism. I think bone thugs succinctly expounded: "gotta make that money mang!"

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

We'd all be a pile of goo if not for glorious capitalism.

actually almost all of the foundational points of western culture/society pre-date capitalism.

i can't even tell anymore, i've been desensitized by jay's free-market proselytizing.

plus whenever shahter shows up you yankees normally make an effort to group-up as a bloc to rebut the commie

Protip: I probably won't reference a bone thugs song in a srs post. Wu tang yes, bone thugs no.

Jay wrote:

Libertarians do not think this way. They recognize and understand that if you're going to have a free society, it means we're all dependent on each other to keep the peace and not try to fuck each other over on a constant basis. What good is a free market if there's no one to trade with? Libertarianism is mostly about pushing decisions that affect us down to the lowest possible level so that we may influence the things that have an impact on our lives. It means that things like how a local school is run should be left up to the locals to decide (hence the calls for the destruction of the Dept. of Ed.). It means that as long as you're not having a negative impact on the others around you, there's no reason to put limits on your behavior or coerce you into making certain decisions. That's all libertarianism is: love of personal freedom.

You keep going on about this, but there is no real example of this working in practice.

From the low level of the tragedy of the commons on up, it simply doesn't work. People are too stupid, anti-social and short-sighted to have a remote chance of managing a field of cows. Add in tribalism, family politics etc and we see where feudalism comes from.

If you think a community of bumpkins squabbling over cow fields is the pinnacle to aspire to then by all means move to one, instead of enjoying your comfortable life in a planned city run and organised by bureaucrats from taxes.

At the level of peasants shovelling dung 'libertarianism' is completely dysfunctional, at town, city, nation-state levels there isn't the tiniest chance of it working.
It never has worked, it never will work, backtracking from being an Ayn Rand fanboy doesn't give any weight to your argument.