[p2p-research] [Commoning] Fwd: article: Markets vs Free Markets by Center for a Stateless Society

Tue Apr 13 09:38:45 CEST 2010

the term free market is of course problematic, since all market forms are
necessarily embedded in an institutional framework and social constraints;
they of course mostly deplore state and corporate monopolistic constraints,
and not true costing and the full incorporation of externalities,

your last sentence suggest that the commons is a full set of solutions, I'd
like to know more about that,

Michel

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Brigitte Kratzwald <
brigitte.kratzwald at attac.at> wrote:

> Dear all!
>
> I want to answer to this mail, though with some delay. As I don't have
> more background information about this concept and this text deals only
> with the level of circulation and exchange, not referring to production
> and decision making, it's hard to find a fair judgement. Besides, of
> course, I don't want to reproduce a kind of good-bad-scheme. But I'd like
> to make some points that seem crucial to me when discussing this concept
> in context with commons:
>
> 1.They say: „The only alternative to a market is to have rationing by
> command.“ It is exactly this argument that kills any discussion by
> reducing it to this either-or-position. There are a lot of possibilities
> in between, one of them, also I wouldn't favour it so much, is the
> Keynesian Welfare State. And another one, I favour much more, is
> commoning, the democratic, need-oriented control of production by all
> people concerned.
>
> 2.They complain about the banks' „unnatural control over buying labor and
> selling their products.“ But they do not question, whether buying labour
> and selling products, i.e. commodities, is the best way to organise the
> production and reproduction of our lives.
>
> 3.Markets, even if they are „free“, allocate commodities according to how
> much money one has and not according to needs. Even, if they suppose, that
> money would be distributed more equal in their system, this is
> questionable.
>
> 4.The focus on the market still reduces people to consumers, and social
> relations to economic relations, instead of stressing the importance of
> co-operative production and democratic regulation as commons do.
>
> 5.And at last, the notion of „free marktes“ as far as I know, should
> support circulation and thus stimulate consumption and possibly is useful
> for situations of deficiency. But in our situation, where it is about
> reducing consumption of ressources I don't think that free markets are a
> solution. It is the big value of a commons' perspective that it is
> possible to combine social justice with sustainable ressource use.
>
> Regards
> Brigitte
>
>
> > One could debate about the following text, but it is interesting for the
> > following reason: these people are inspired by the same emancipatory
> > spirit,
> > and therefore, should be allies, not enemies,
> >
> > this are not the 'royal free libertarians', who excuse any kind of
> > domination, but left-sided libertarians, who years for a truly free
> > 'market', and they don't mean 'capitalism',
> >
> > Michel
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: MARZIO VENEMAN <max.rythmos at yahoo.com>
> > Date: Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 5:28 PM
> > Subject: [p2p-research] article: Markets vs Free Markets by Center for a
> > Stateless Society
> > To: p2p research <p2presearch at listcultures.org>
> >
> >
> >
> >  Dear subscribers P2P
> >
> > With reference to this recent article, I take pleasure informing you as
> > follows:
> >
> >
> >
> > http://c4ss.org/content/2165
> >
> >
> >
> > Libertarians throw the phrase “free market” around a lot, but the
> > important
> > word among those two is *free*.  Markets, per se, are really an
> > after-thought. It’s not as if we don’t want freedom in our non-market
> > activities.  We want to have freedom, in all ways, including in our
> > “market
> > transactions”.  The word market confuses a lot of people because they
> > imagine “markets” to be an institution, a thing that one can point to and
> > say “this is a Market”.  But we don’t mean it that way, really.  There’s
> > no
> > such *thing* as a market.  It’s just a catch-all term to cover the sum
> > total
> > of all exchanges.
> >
> > The only alternative to a market is to have rationing by command.  One
> > monopoly with control of all goods who hands them out to people according
> > to
> > a scheme that monopoly has planned out in advance.  A situation where
> > there
> > is any sort of trade at all, is technically a market.
> >
> > Now it is true that any exchange leaves people better off than they would
> > be
> > had they not made the exchange, or they wouldn’t do it.  This even
> applies
> > to a simple robbery.  When the robber says “your money or your life” and
> > you
> > hand over the money, at the time, you felt that that was the better
> > option.
> >  *However*, this is where context comes in.  To paraphrase Lysander
> > Spooner,
> > one must question how the robber came into the position to offer you that
> > exchange.  For another oft used example, when the sweatshop owner offers
> > people a job under terrible conditions, and they take that job,
> certainly,
> > to them, it was better than not having that job.  Simply banning that
> > transaction will leave those people with even worse options to survive.
> > But
> > again, what must be questioned is how the sweatshop owner came into the
> > position of making that offer.
> >
> > When the politicians and media pundits talk about “market-based
> solutions”
> > or “markets” at all, one must wonder what sort of markets we are dealing
> > with.  Almost certainly not “free markets” for many, many reasons.  The
> > biggest culprit here, and the one that is the least visible to most
> people
> > is the banking system, with central banking as it’s lynchpin, the piece
> of
> > the machine that holds the whole thing together.  Even people that
> > complain
> > about “the Fed” generally see the problem with it being “inflation”,
> > meaning
> > price inflation.  The part that is less seen is how the banking system as
> > we
> > know it creates oligopoly/oligopsony, meaning a market with a few large
> > producers who are able to wield unnatural control over buying labor and
> > selling their products.
> >
> > A fiat currency, that is to say a currency not backed by anything in
> > particular except the government forcing people to use it, floats against
> > the value of all goods and services that can be bought with that
> currency.
> > As more currency enters the system, the marginal value of each unit of
> > currency goes down.  This is ordinarily seen in the form of price
> > inflation,
> > but that depends on how quickly goods and services are being produced in
> > relation to how quickly currency is entering the system.  Either way
> > though,
> > X amount of currency will buy less if there is 10000*X amount of currency
> > than if there was 1000*X.
> >
> > Now when a bank lends currency to a large corporation, to a great extent
> > (95-99%), that currency is “produced” out of thin air.  A number goes
> into
> > a
> > ledger, and now *poof* that account has, say, 100 million dollars in it.
> > This currency doesn’t really exist in the system until it is spent.
> > Whatever that corporation spends that money on, it has essentially stolen
> > from everyone else who is holding an amount of that currency.  Assuming
> > the
> > loan is going to be paid back, then it is the bank who has stolen it.
> >
> > (If I rob your house and lend the money I steal to someone to buy a lamp,
> > who does the lamp actually belong to?)
> >
> > Whoever sold the corporation whatever it bought benefits a certain amount
> > from that new money as well.  They are getting a signal that there is
> more
> > demand for X, and will raise their prices.  They in turn will spend that
> > money, etc… Whoever sees that money last, will benefit least because
> > prices
> > have already gone up to match the new level of currency.
> >
> > To simplify this model, you can see it as a redistribution of purchasing
> > power.  Those who borrow the most gain the most, and those who save, lose
> > the most.  In the end the banks themselves gain the most because they get
> > all of that purchasing power back and then some, *as long as interest
> > payments are able to keep up with inflation*.  This forces the banks to
> > make
> > sure that interest rates are high enough to account for inflation, or
> they
> > will lose purchasing power in the long run.
> >
> > But this leads to a situation where those who establish themselves early
> > in
> > a market are able to compete for banking dollars better than late comers.
> > Plus, the money they got was more valuable than the money the late comers
> > got.  This leads to an ever escalating “barrier to entry” as the fixed
> > costs
> > of doing business rise and rise.
> >
> > This alone eventually creates oligopoly, with no other intervention.  To
> > make it worse, almost everything that the government does either destroys
> > capital outright, inhibits new capital formation, or controls how capital
> > can be transferred.  This makes the marginal cost of capital higher,
> which
> > benefits the existing owners of capital at the expense of everyone else.
> > This artificial scarcity of capital creates an artificial abundance of
> > labor
> > relative to capital, which leads to unemployment and low wages.
> >
> > Regulation is a big part of this scheme.  The regulatory state as we know
> > it
> > was created by the progressive movement in the late 1800s and early
> 1900s.
> >  Though the mythology of American history implies otherwise, it was well
> > known at the time that this would create oligopoly.  Oligopoly was
> > promoted
> > as a more “rational” way of having markets than the “chaos” of free
> > markets.  Of course once you establish oligopoly, regulation becomes
> > “necessary” in order to prevent the oligopoly from completely screwing
> > everyone else over.  It’s a chicken-egg type of self-fulfilling prophecy.
> >
> > If it came to pass that the only beverage suppliers, including water,
> were
> > CocaCola Inc and PepsiCo, and it was impossibly expensive for anyone else
> > to
> > *legally* provide beverages, there would be a good case to be made to
> > regulate those companies in order to prevent them from selling us sewage
> > at
> > 10 dollars a bottle.  There would certainly be a black market in water,
> > which the “law and order” types would cry about.  The quality and price
> of
> > that black market water would be questionable and people would be killing
> > each other over turf.  There would probably be some right wingers at that
> > point saying “let them die of thirst” but in this case, the left-wingers
> > would be right, *in context*.  But one must again question how such a
> > situation came to pass.
> >
> > One of the major forms of oligopolistic regulation and one of the most
> > obvious is the idea of “intellectual property”.  Copyrights and patents
> > directly establish oligopoly, if not monopoly, for a certain amount of
> > time.  Patents at least are fairly limited in their time and scope.  But
> > copyrights are essentially perpetual for the purposes of any human
> > lifetime.  And the precedent has been set of extending copyright terms
> > indefinitely, specifically to protect copyrights already held by big
> > business. (see Disney for an example)
> >
> > After the fact of establishing this system of oligopoly, the government
> > then
> > will step in and subsidize those at the bottom of this government-created
> > pyramid in order to prevent mass starvation and riots.  Interestingly
> > enough, this subsidy also creates a barrier to entry in markets, by
> > putting
> > a floor on labor costs, making oligopoly worse, and pushing more people
> > down
> > to this floor in the long run.
> >
> > Eventually the logic of this system leads to a sort of Kapitalist
> > Leninism,
> > in which there is one large producer that sells everything and employs
> > everyone who is employed and everyone else is on welfare.  The movie
> > Wall-e
> > showed this sort of “business communism” pretty well.
> >
> > Right wingers talk about “markets” all day long, but to a large extent,
> > what
> > they oppose is merely the welfare part of the system.  They oppose the
> > redistribution from the rich and middle class to the poor, but not the
> > redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich.  If one takes
> > their ideology to its logical extreme, we would have the banks owning
> > everything, maybe the top 10% of all workers in each field would have a
> > job
> > and everyone else would be forced to join the military or starve.  This
> > military would necessarily be employed to protect “private property” from
> > looters and rioters, so the common man would be forced to kill his
> > neighbors
> > or be killed by them.  The Kapitalist Leninism of the liberal consensus
> > almost looks good in comparison.  This is what so-called liberals or
> > progressives envision when you say the term “free markets” or
> “capitalism”
> > to them.  Neither the “left” nor the “right” as we know them today
> > understands or opposes the mechanism of oligopoly, they’re just fighting
> > over how the spoils are spread around.
> >
> > To our descendents who will live in a free society, “Dilbert” wouldn’t
> > make
> > any sense.  No one could stay in business doing those things, because
> > someone else would rise up to challenge any business run so poorly.
> > “Office
> > politics” would be impossible because you’d lose money, and there
> wouldn’t
> > be endless reams of financing and “bailouts” to keep you in business.
> > Capital would grow horizontally and organically, because there would be
> an
> > incentive to save.  This would lower the price of capital and make
> > businesses more and more competitive, in wages, prices and product
> > quality.
> > Without banks redistributing capital to the core and without the
> > government
> > raising the barriers to entry, “big business” as we know it – oligopolies
> > who decide who is employed and who is unemployed, who produce shoddy
> > products with poor customer service because “where else are you going to
> > go?” would be impossible.  This is why the “free” part of the phrase free
> > markets is much more important than the market part.  We already have
> > markets.  What we don’t have is freedom.
> >
> >
> > I trust this information is sufficient for your purposes, in case you
> > require any additional details, please do not hesitate to contact the
> > undersigned.
> >
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > Cordiali Saluti
> >
> >
> > Marzio Veneman
> > The Netherlands
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > *Click here to visit my international professional profile and connect!
> > *http://nl.linkedin.com/in/Rythmomachy
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rythmomachy
> >
> > http://www.thefacebook.com/Rythmomachy
> >
> > Free Mobile telephone worldwide http:// <
> http://www.jaxtr.com/max.rythmos>
> > www.jaxtr.com/max.rythmos
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> > This email message may contain privilliged information and is solely
> > intended for the recipient(s) mentioned above.  To ensure that you
> > continue
> > receiving our emails, please add max.rythmos [at] yahoo_com to your
> > address
> > book or safe list.
> >
> > ------------------------------
> >
> >  ------------------------------
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > p2presearch mailing list
> > p2presearch at listcultures.org
> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think
> > thank:
> > http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
> >
> > P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  -
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
> >
> > Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
> > http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
> >
> > Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
> > http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>  > _______________________________________________
> > Commoning mailing list
> > Commoning at lists.wissensallmende.de
> > http://lists.wissensallmende.de/mailman/listinfo/commoning
> >
>
>
>

-- 
Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University - Think thank:
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100413/32fe1656/attachment-0001.html>