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

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Kevin,

you write about patrick's source freedom approach:

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.

I've said this many times myself, but not lately, and this is why the
approach is not acceptable to me on the basis of very fundamental
principles. Any approach which disenfranchises producers of value completely
is very problematic, and contrary to what I'd like to achieve.

Michel

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 8:10 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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<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
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100426/c1fa8506/attachment.html>