Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Is it true that the FED is privately owned
by
Alpaca John
on 18/05/2013, 09:09:14 UTC

To get to the point, if one can create a monopoly on something, one destroys the free market, usually the free market finds an alternate and monopoly dies out. Today monopolies only exist because we create them with law, they cannot exist in a free system.

I have trouble agreeing with this statement. What about the network effect (ie. google, ebay, and yes, bitcoin)? What about the self-reïnforcing mechanism of surplus value and scaling?

I don't know, you might be right, but I'll have to think about this one a little bit. Any reads you can recommend?

Quote
So in conclusion I would define property as that which is created, without infringing on individual rights and can be exchanged in a free market.


Ah, so you're actually saying land should NOT be defined as property then? It seemed like you argued the exact opposite in the initial (misspelled) post. In this case I absolutely agree!

Although, I would actually like to propose an alternative. (I think.)

How about defining land as public property, as opposed to not defining land as no property at all? 'Cause the latter seems rather unfeasable; we might all want to live in the heart of London or Paris or whatever.

By having the government manage it, we could have the good aspects of the market (incentive to contribute to society in exchange for a nice place to live) without the bad (the posed problem of surplus value of land a.k.a. neo-feudalism).

For this to work we obviously need to get money out of politics first, since governments are privately owned at the moment, which would therefore completely defeat the purpose of making land 'public' property.