I’m just picking up on the thread below here: Picture a corporate executive working for, say, Nike, and sitting beside him a sweatshop laborer working for, say, Nike.
One of these people knows a whole lot more about free markets than the other. Guess which one.
OK then. Guess again.
Piece of Mindful 
Markets have different degrees of freedom.
I’m interested in the market for federal bureaucrats.
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I think we talk by each other quite a bit. Yes, there are markets, and they function well, but the idea of a “free” market is a Trojan horse. What happens is that people get in a position where they have power over other people, and the concept of “free” simply means that there are no restrictions on how that power is exercised.
So assume that there is unemployment, which puts downward pressure on wages, so that employers have power over potential employees. In a free market, people will work for $1.00 an hour, as that power cannot be challenged. In a regulated market, that employee will get a minimum wage of $7.15.
The regulated market is better than the free market.
And let me head you off at the pass – the idea that there are fewer hires due to minimum wage has never been backed by solid evidence. Quite the contrary.
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Partly it is a language thing: we lard up our phrasing, such as “free markets”, “common good”, “diversity is our strength”, while the results are often neither common nor diverse nor good nor free nor strong.
I’m not against regulation, but one should realize that markets and reality often route around such. Illegal immigrants and mechanization are routes around minimum wage and union rules.
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I think it is apparent that over the long haul mechanization merely shifts jobs to higher levels of output. But immigration and outsourcing are indeed, as you say, market reactions to high wage levels. This problem is easily remedied by border control and tariffs, but concentrated wealth prevents action on these problems.
Free markets are harmful.
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I think it is apparent that over the long haul mechanization merely shifts jobs to higher levels of output.
Tell that to your union buddies.
We used to have pinsetter jobs. Mechanization eliminated those completely.
We used to switch phone lines by hand. Now it is all digitized.
The key here is that new jobs are created to replace the lost jobs. There is some hand wringing lately over how to create new jobs.
… but concentrated wealth prevents action on these problems.
There’s not much traction from any side on this issue. Many don’t even count it as a problem. Bring on more people. Bring on more foreign goods. More is better. More. More. More. Too much is not enough. To infinity and beyond.
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Its not a ‘free’ market when the labor force is not legally allowed to organize.
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