Quote from: mobodick on July 08, 2013, 04:10:26 PM

Free-ish markets also consume much more natural resources and are the least sustainable from that standpoint. Also, our western 'free' markets thrive on the backs of cheap labour countries. Without them things would not look so free anymore. The 'freedom' of the world markets is enforced with violence. "What did you say, Saddam? You want to sell oil to china and not to us? Fuck you, we will take your country and rape it for decades."
Free markets can be pretty abusive and selfish. So you have to ask yourself if the prosperity justifies the damage they can do. At the very least you would have to be ready with dealing with the inevitable scaling problems of free economies. People with moey and power are in the position to outgrow all and everyone.

There's no "free-ish" markets. There are free markets, and there are coercive markets. If someone is forced to toil or purchase something against their will, that's not a free market any more. If your argument is that free markets can't survive the influx of assholes, then argue that, and we'll have a discussion about how to keep assholes out of free markets. But don't tell us that "free markets don't exist" because of what coercive non-free markets do. Because if your argument is that coercive non-free markets require violence to maintain, then yes, we totally agree with you. And we want to get rid of that violence, because we believe it's not needed.

Quote from: mobodick on July 08, 2013, 04:10:26 PM

Markets, if left uncontroled, are perfectly capable of destroying the very soil they get their produce from. People, on average, are not good in these games and this allows a small group of individuals to win the market.

I agree, people generally are not good at that, but giving them the title of "government" doesn't somehow impose more wisdom on them. If a person in a free market destroys the very soil he gets his produce from, he has killed his own business, and is out of the market. That's a damn good incentive to take care of one's soil. If a government employee or agencies did that, however, they are generally not accountable for that, since their salary depends on taxes from people who have no choice but to pay them, not from the product of that soil.

Quote from: mobodick on July 08, 2013, 04:10:26 PM

The normal historical transaction is something like this: Some free market emerges, market gets so big it attracts criminals and tricksters, market gets hijacked by clever manipulation, not by providing best product to where its needed, public outcry for regulations. Rince, repeat.
That is why markets can only be relatively free. They will always start to abuse their freedom and so we get these regulations.

If purely free markets were possible then everyone would do that instead, right?

Interesting. We, market invents this crazy digital currency, this market gets so big that it at tracks hackers, criminals, tricksters, and scammers, including many ponzi scheme operators, there was a public outcry when things went really bad and ponzi schemes collapsed like dominos, yet no one stepped in to regulate it. So, is Bitcoin dead now? Is it continuing to exist in an unregulated way? What happened that it doesn't seem to want to follow your method?