On 10/08/2015 09:15 AM, rysiek wrote:
Dnia środa, 7 października 2015 09:53:09 Razer pisze:
Ah, so the assumption is: "had there been no regulation, we would not get monopolies"?
Am I getting that right? Without regulation you OWN your OWN 'monopoly' in whatever you accumulate and so does everyone else.
The Hunts cornered the silver market in a REGULATED market, which, for economic reasons better left to others to explain, cause the price of silver to decline dramatically and then stabilize and stay at that level for years .
In a free market they'd just be sitting on a bunch of silver they couldn't sell and anyone else with silver would go on trading with others on a more equilateral basis.
What if they *owned* all silver? For instance, by buying out all competition?
Unless it was something indispensable, they'd be sitting on something worthless. That's why, until the industrial age, almost all wars were over WATER rights., Not extractive resource rights (currently thinking of DRC, pretty much the sole source for the tantalum for your smartphone's touchy-feelie screen and micro-capacitors) By extension, cornering the market in silver, or tantalum, or any industrially-used extractive resource brings the industrial age one step closer to extinction (snigger...)
Of course I'm making the assumption that really free markets can only exist in fully decentralized societies that would eschew centralized trading AND the middlemen necessary for it's operation.
Can we assume that there was a time in the history of humankind (very, very early on) when this was the case? Or is that assumption to strong?
Before nation-states and city states it was most likely THE way of life for humans ... Until the industrial revolution it still existed in many tribal-based hunter-gatherer and agrarian cultures. Even today the Zapatistas have a slogan that spells out the cultural mindset: "Everything for everyone and nothing for ourselves" Communities based on getting for oneself so one can 'give' to others is sickness. In healthy cultures one works for the community so the fruits of one's labor comes to all who participate. W. Edward Deming knew that was the way things should work, and so does every industrialist on the planet. But it doesn't maximize THEIR profit. Admittedly, like databases, 'scaling' can be a bit of a problem. RR Ps. Elective watchings: A 13 minute exposition on How Class Works (101) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euH3pAuLuko