CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Idiotic Ian Fletcher on Economics vs. Fakeonomics  Mon Sep 20, 2010 2:43 am | |
| We skeptics of free trade are used to being told, “You don’t understand economics.” In fact, one major reason I wrote the book Free Trade Doesn’t Work was simply to expose, once and for all, that there do exist extremely serious and intellectually reputable arguments, within the confines of accepted mainstream economics, which question free trade. And indeed they exist.
But I’ve noticed something. We skeptics are often not really struggling against real economics at all. When I pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal, or Forbes, or The New York Times, or turn on Fox News or MSNBC, or read papers issued by the libertarian Cato Institute or the Peterson Institute for International Economics, I don’t even find economic arguments. I find a mischievous substitute for economics we can call “fakeonomics.”
What is fakeonomics? It sounds like economics to the uninitiated. It uses the same language, addresses the same issues, and fills the same logical hole in the national policy discourse. Most people can’t tell the difference. But fakeonomics is not the real thing.
How is fakeonomics fake? It tells a story that goes something like this:
Free markets are always right, always and everywhere.
Anyone who doesn’t believe this is stupid. Smart people not only understand that free markets are best, they like free markets, because free markets mean opportunities to get rich.
Or maybe they’re corrupt. The opposite of free markets is government. Government is always incompetent. It never does anything right. Ever.
Or maybe they’re evil. Anyone who doesn’t believe in perfectly free markets is a Marxist wannabe or a loser jealous of more-successful people.
Free trade is just free markets applied internationally.
Therefore all smart, good, successful people must believe in free trade.
Unfortunately, fakeonomics is, at best, a crude parody of economics. It is often larded with a thick layer of moral hectoring, courtesy of a certain variety of the American Right which seems to think that economics is its exclusive property, a stick given it by God to beat liberals with. There is even a whole class of people, known as “libertarians,” who elevate fakeonomics to the level of an all-encompassing moral ideology. (Their fundamentalist sect is the old Ayn Rand cult, whose members call themselves “objectivists.”)
So let’s be clear about one thing: real economics does not support the idea that 100 percent pure free markets are best. Not domestically, not internationally. That’s why the U.S. has, like every other developed nation, a mixed economy, with government amounting to about 35 percent (pre-2008; it’s spiked since then) of our GDP and various laws, from child labor laws to environmental laws and the SEC, regulating much of the rest. It’s easy to fulminate against this fact in beautiful after-dinner speeches about economic liberty, but the reality is that when in office, even conservative Republicans grasp the necessity of most of these policies—whatever adjustments on the margin they may make.
ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS
Ignorant fuck!
_________________
Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann |
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CovOps
Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
| | Subject: Re: Idiotic Ian Fletcher on Economics vs. Fakeonomics Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:36 am | |
| This clueless fuck is at it again...
Only this time, he's polluting The Market Oracle with:
The Libertarian Delusion That "Real" Free Trade Would Work
Read it and... spew!
ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS
PS. Why the fuck does The Market Oracle tolerate this statist, disinformation propagandist, anyway? The useless fucker is just a deliberate statist implant... exterminate the cunt!
_________________
Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann |
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