[p2p-research] The "Free Market" requires scarcity

[Kevin Carson]

On 4/24/10, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com> wrote:
> Supporters of the so-called "Free Market" claim all our troubles would
>  be over if we could just stop the governments from handing favors to
>  big business.
>
>  But producers choose to limit production and destroy reserves *on
>  their own* because they want to keep price above cost.
>
>  The examples of this are many, but here is a video of hundreds of
>  Belgian farmers dumping milk in an attempt to reduce the supply:
>  http://YouTube.com/watch?v=pDAjMcDWDZ0
>
>  If the workers were the owners, the results would be the same.

Possibly--if all other variables were held constant.  But what are
some of those variables?

Are there, for example, market entry barriers making it artificially
difficult for just anyone to start raising cattle and selling milk,
without some sort of government certification, or some sort of
expensive government inspection or licensing fees that limit the
number of people competing in the market?

Might some of the problem be overproduction for large, anonymous
commodity markets in which production is divorced from demand and
organized on a supply-push model, instead of being geared to local
demand?  Might some of it be, as Chris suggested, the market power of
middlemen who drive down the price primary producers can receive for
their commodities, to the point where they can only be sold at a loss?

>  We are fundamentally confused about the purpose of business.
>
>  We should be producing for *product* (use value), but are instead
>  producing for *profit* (exchange value) which cannot abide abundance.

I don't think there's any confusion about the fact that people in
business *want* to make money.  What they want to do and how they want
to do it, and what they're *able* to do, though, are two different
things.  I think there may be some fundamental confusion here about
what makes them able to do it.  Destroying product in order to reduce
supply and drive up the price is just great--if you can stop anyone
from entering the market and selling for closer to production cost and
undercutting you.  If there's no restriction on access to the dairy
market or on permission to produce milk, pouring milk down the sewer
would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

On the other hand, we may be fundamentally confused on what being a
consumer is all about.  Wal-Mart is flooded with customers seeking the
lowest possible dirt-cheap price on everything, even if it's produced
by Chinese slave labor (and lots of people who shop for nannies and
gardeners from foreign countries who will work without FICA payments).
 How would that change if customers owned the sweatshops?

If there's a conflict of interest between workers and consumers, why
won't it work both ways?  Isn't it just as much in the interest of
consumers to get workers to work for as little as possible?  Most
people are both wage-workers and consumers, so it's hard to imagine
them going from being total utility-maximizing, price-gouging
shitheels as producers, and then transforming into Gandhi or Mother
Theresa as consumer-owners.

I repeat, consumer sovereignty is great for the portion of the day
that you're a consumer.  But for the portion of your life that you
punch a time-clock and become a serf, it's not so great.  The greatest
source of misery in many people's lives is the hours they're working
under the orders and direction of someone else.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html