You appear to be constitutionally incapable of understanding my point. Transferring wealth from one group to another is always a political process, whether it's done by the government of by “unfettered markets”.

There is nothing political about a transfer of wealth by means of voluntary transactions. Choosing to pay for an Opera House by donations or by patronage is entirely different than forcing me to pay for one by taxing me.

The collective decision to accept the distribution that results from market operations (i.e. letting people keep what they “earn”), which is itself highly influenced by pre-existing patterns of distribution, is a political one just as much as is the decision not to accept it.

There is nothing in the US Constitution that allows such collective action. A majority could vote to jail Buddhists but the vote would not justify the actions. The US was based on the principle of natural rights. You might want to look up what that means before youtry to subvert the Constitution by pushing collectivism.

When you call redistribution “meddling”, you're just signaling your support for extreme levels of inequality.

Not at all. I take a moral position which makes it clear that the use of force to redistribute wealth cannot be justified.

Which is fine, as far as it goes. But when you go on from there to claim that your opinion just happens to match what is “natural”, you're not only wrong, you're indistinguishable from anyone who runs around claiming god is on their side.

It is not the same thing. The market rewards those that produce value and can get people to buy what they are selling. It does not care about how smart the producer is, how hard s/he works or if s/he is a good person. That may be harsh but the theory and evidence suggests that is the way it is.

Which is also fine, I suppose, if you're happy being dismissed as a zealot.

I doubt that most rational people would consider someone who is standing up for voluntary exchange and opposing the use of force to be a zealot. Of course, rational people do not consider collectivism to be a good idea as you do.

I suggest that you look to history as a guide. The economies that have best been able to lift people out of poverty were those that interfered with the market process the least. No matter how the data is spun, central planning is a failure.

But the free market isn't. After all, in a relatively free market society like the US, the average worker was able to have a standard of living that surpassed those of managers, lawyers and doctors in places like the USSR, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, etc. Workers from China, where they were guaranteed a 'living wage,' risked their lives try to escape to Hong Kong, where they were on their own. In a free market society people move both up and down the wealth curve so starting off poor, as most young people do after graduation is not a problem because of the opportunities to create a better life. That is not the case in a controlled society, where one pretty much stays on the rung to which s/he is appointed by bureaucrats that call the shots.

You appear to be constitutionally incapable of understanding my point. Transferring wealth from one group to another is always a political process, whether it's done by the government of by “unfettered markets”. The collective decision to accept the distribution that results from market operations (i.e. letting people keep what they “earn”), which is itself highly influenced by pre-existing patterns of distribution, is a political one just as much as is the decision not to accept it.

When you call redistribution “meddling”, you're just signaling your support for extreme levels of inequality. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But when you go on from there to claim that your opinion just happens to match what is “natural”, you're not only wrong, you're indistinguishable from anyone who runs around claiming god is on their side. Which is also fine, I suppose, if you're happy being dismissed as a zealot.

Market created CDOs? What market?

Rating agencies were protected from competition and from law suits by regulations. You had the mortgage markets dominated by government sponsored entities that were cooking the books in plain sight but had their managers' actions protected by members of Congress that were taking massive amounts of contributions to finance their campaigns. You had a Fed that was busy blowing serial bubbles and promised to bail out risk-takers who failed and a Treasury that suggested to financial companies that the key to surviving was to get too big to fail. You had federal auditors that permitted banks to use leverage that would make hedge fund managers nervous. You had regulations that forced banks to lend to subprime candidates who never could have paid off their loans if the housing market turned. You had government economists painting a cheery picture while the realistic view was left to private sector analysts who were jumping up and down warning of the crisis to come.

There was no market failure in 2008/2009. What we saw was the inevitable failure of government meddling as predicted by practitioners of the Austrian School of Economics like Marc Faber, Ron Paul, Lou Rockwell, Peter Schiff, Tom Woods, Thomas DiLorenzo, etc., etc., etc.

And believe IS the operative word because an undying belief in unregulated markets in light of the current economy takes blind faith and indoctrination of an extraordinary degree.

Unregulated market? Bush increased the number of federal employees by 50% and added more than 14,000 pages to the Federal Register. That is not deregulation and certainly is not an example of a free market. Also keep in mind that in the EU, where there are about as many regulations governing the financial sector, the banks wound up using about double the leverage of their American counterparts.

Vangel…. right now everyone in America pretty much works for Goldman Sachs.

Only because people like you favoured a bailout that the libertarians opposed. In a free market system the federal government would not have bailed out Goldman Sachs.

That's bad enough but do you really think they need you to defend them at this point?

I am not. You are defending them by arguing that government should have the power to bail out politically connected institutions. In the system that I favour politicians could not grant favours to their banking buddies and risk would not be socialized.

Come on break free from your hypnotic stupor and join us in the revolution to take our country back from these terrorist.

Your ignorance of the implications of your own words is astounding. By supporting big government that can save its favourite companies people like you favour robbing taxpayers and consumers. In a free market system politicians would not have the power to help companies like Goldman Sachs commit fraud, write laws that put up barriers to competitors, or use the taxpayer as a piggy bank when their bets go sour.

Um, no. The line is not fixed at zero, and should not be. In pre-classical economic theory (to give it an anachronistic but suggestive name, Malthusian economics), the lower bound of the line is fixed at 'subsistence' (i.e. the income necessary to afford to buy enough food to make it to tomorrow). Actually, if subsistence were truly the level at which the lower bound of the line were set, the lower classes would never experience any population growth (lacking as they then would the necessary chemical energy to produce children in excess of the replacement rate), which they have for most of recorded history. Classical economics (Ricardo, Smith, etc.) consisted of several competing attempts to explicate a theory that could account for this observed fact.

Sometimes, of course, the lower bound falls below subsistence *but still above zero* (e.g. the Irish potato famine), usually because of natural disaster, but more recently (as in the case of the Irish famine) also sometimes because of 'economic mismanagement'. It is an interesting question as to whether such 'mismanagement' implies a manager. The prevailing capitalist orthodoxy claims that *correct* management implies the *lack* of a manager, but this is far from clear to me theoretically or empirically (though Hayek does make a strong theoretical case).

In any case, it is by no means clear that we (as a polity or as a species) cannot (either through central planning, [which admittedly doesn't have a great track record] or through some clever manipulation of the market's 'rules of the road') ensure that the lower bound of that line is *much higher* than mere subsistence. How much higher is primarily a political question. As DMonteith aptly puts it:

“Not many people have a problem with an unequal distribution of surpluses. Again, what's at stake here is the definition of “surplus” versus what constitutes basic needs. There's a moral/normative argument that, for instance, some level of access to health care should now be defined as a basic need, not as a surplus good subject to unequal distribution.”

Incidentally, the key to not utterly failing to understand that last sentence is the phrase 'some level'. Even Hayek agreed with this sentiment. (I kind of hate myself for writing that last sentence, but, well, it's both true and apropos.)

It's amazing that even with the 20/20 hindsight of market created CDO's destroying the global economy and rewarding their craven soulless creators unfathomable wealth that some one can actually say what you said above and believe it. And believe IS the operative word because an undying belief in unregulated markets in light of the current economy takes blind faith and indoctrination of an extraordinary degree.

Vangel…. right now everyone in America pretty much works for Goldman Sachs. That's bad enough but do you really think they need you to defend them at this point? Come on break free from your hypnotic stupor and join us in the revolution to take our country back from these terrorist.

So who, exactly, is the utopian here?

Hint: you can't “take politics out of the game”–politics (loosely defined)is the game.

Ensuring that those that “deserve” wealth actually accumulate it is a political process, not a market process.

Human nature will ensure that politics will define 'deserving' in a way that will harm value creation. That is why we need to take politics out of the game and let the free market determine who gets what based on their ability to create value for others who choose freely to purchase what the producers are offering.

I think that you think of society as some type of Malthusian nightmare in which the gain of one person is offset by a loss by another but that is not the case. In a libertarian society, individuals can only become rich if they can convince consumers to buy the products and services that they offer. They can only do that if they provide quality products and services at prices that are preferable to those offered by their competitors. If you knew anything about the way economies work you will be aware that rich people need many well paid employees to design, make and sell those products and services. Individuals like Bill Gates, Sam Walton and Warren Buffett have become extremely wealthy. But as they became wealthy, they also made tens of thousands of their employees and investors extremely wealthy and provided good paying jobs to millions of people, not only in the US but around the world.

Your Malthusian nightmare does not exist in a free market economic system, only in the socialist one that you actually favour.

“I really find that if you think libertarianism and “free markets” principles through to their logical conclusion you end up with serfdom. I've not met one libertarian who can rebut this point with any degree of logic.”

This only proves that you have never actually met a real libertarian. If you had, you may have learned that free market capitalism is the only economic system that is truly compatible with liberty, material prosperity, and human dignity. You may have learned that every step that takes us away from free market capitalism is a step that brings us to serfdom, where the worst people in society are given the power to plan and manage the economy that they cannot possibly understand.

None of what I say is anything new or novel. Early last century, men like Ludwig von Mises followed in the steps of the French defenders of classical liberalism and showed that every step towards central planning (and away from the free market capitalism) was a step towards totalitarianism and the loss of human liberty as well as human dignity. Mises proved that the central planners had to fail because they had no access to the price information that only free markets can provide. Central planning and socialism would make society poorer, harsher and more despotic. less liveable, more brutal, more despotic. By the way, the argument was against both types of socialism; the international type favoured by Lenin, Mao, and Marx as well as the national type favoured by Mussolini and Hitler.

Since conversing with you is obviously pointless, I'd just like to point out to others who might read this that markets have nothing to tell us about “deserving”. Markets tend to efficiently allocate resources to various uses, and this efficient allocation is different for every possible different initial distribution of wealth. The shape of the initial distribution is a question that markets are completely indifferent to. Ensuring that those that “deserve” wealth actually accumulate it is a political process, not a market process. Just saying.

Ah. I apologize for interrupting your demolition of that scarecrow. Don't mind me; wank on!

Who is they? And why should 'they' decide where wealth should go when we know that the free market is much better at ensuring that those that deserve wealth actually accumulate it? Vangel

They should decide because they are the overwhelming majority of people in the society. They are the people who send their sons to die in wars to allow super rich people to get rich and to have their wealth protected once they've made it. They are the majority of people who build the infrastructure of society allowing some to accumulate great wealth.

And you claim free markets are best at distributing wealth??? On what basis? Where is your evidence?

If free markets are best and they result in massive concentrations of wealth and high poverty rates they probably aren't logically defined as “best” are they? Except by the elite minority they so disproportionately benefit.

So in a libertarian society what is there to keep the extremely wealthy from owning all the property and indenturing all the have not's to work on their land just as the serfs of the middle ages?

I really find that if you think libertarianism and “free markets” principles through to their logical conclusion you end up with serfdom. I've not met one libertarian who can rebut this point with any degree of logic.

Not at all. I think that no matter which policies are in place you will have a similar distribution. In the USSR and China we had the top few people control most of the capital in the nation and lived as kings even as the average worker lived in poverty and as the top doctors, professors, lawyers, scientists, etc., had a standard of living that was below that of a simple tradesman in the West.

“Certainly it is and you seem to be claiming that the 99.5% should have no say in policy and ultimately wealth concentration.”

I don't think that anyone should have a say on the matter. I favour free markets in which people can keep what they earn and taxpayers do not bail out politically connected companies, their shareholders and workers. I have no problem if Steve Jobs earns a billion dollars because he is good at driving Apple's strategy against its competitors and would not lose any sleep if Jamie Dimon went bankrupt. Like a typical libertarian, I favour free markets and oppose corporatism and socialism.

“They should just done on and watch more of the productive wealth they create be given to a small minority who really will do nothing good with it.”

Who is they? And why should 'they' decide where wealth should go when we know that the free market is much better at ensuring that those that deserve wealth actually accumulate it?

And why aren't you arguing that governments need to step aside and make certain that corporations that screw up are allowed to go bankrupt? Why aren't you pi**ed off that governments are using the taxpayer and consumer to ensure that incompetent managers and workers are protected from more competent competitors that offer better products and services at favourable costs? Why aren't you pi**ed off that trial lawyers are allowed to get rich by robbing shareholders and workers of companies just because they are good at picking ignorant jurors who have no common sense and are emotional rather than rational? Why aren't you pi**ed off that organizations like the AMA prevent competition in health care or that states do not permit insurance companies to sell across state lines?

The problem does not come from rich people but from a system that allows some to get rich thanks to the use of the government's monopoly on the initiation of power and its ability to meddle in voluntary transactions.