Betraying Adam Smith: Corporate Libertarians and Runaway Capitalism

[Unregistered]

What you really want to say, be economic in your words, save your time and particular ours!!

[Al Erkkila (oldwhig.blogspot.com)]

You need to check out the works of Murray Rothbard, the main philosopher and economist of anarchocapitalism. Start at www.mises.org. Libertarians are fully aware of Corporatism and its evils. Adam Smith's work is almost entirely on that issue.

[Jim Pivonka]

I am searching for Smith's comments on the drive of owners of capital to interfere with the operationn of free markets, in order to maximize profits.<br>That information would be included in the essay following:<br><br>Betraying Adam Smith: Corporate Libertarians and Runaway Capitalism<br><br>The Liberal/Libertarian nexus is a mess, politically and conceptually, right now. I have seen the term "anarcho-Libertarian" <br>used to describe the extreme forms of libertarianism which have been funded and used so successfully by the Corporatist <br>oligarchy to discredit government protection of free markets from predatory corporatism.<br><br>Liberalism can be anti collectivist, pro market and pro pluralist, reaffirming the Constitutional system of checks and <br>balances envisioned by the founders without adopting a policy stance that renders us incapable of dealing with the drive of <br>corporatist oligarchs to destroy markets.<br><br>Libertarians, on the other hand, are largely rendered impotent in the face of private actions to distort and prevent the <br>efficient action of markets by their near "religious" objection to government action.<br><br>In her article "Enron and the Myths of Runaway Capitalism" Marjorie Kelly, publisher of Business Ethics, describes some of <br>current problems of "invisible hand" theory. George Soros touches on it in his Essay "The Capitalist Threat". Of course <br>Adam Smith, in the "Wealth of Nations" addressed the same problems, though they were not quite as central to the <br>development of political economy at the time.<br><br>url's in order of link appearance<br> http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html <br> http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/assault.htm <br> http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/failure.htm <br>http://iisd1.iisd.ca/pcdf/corprule/betrayal.htm<br> http://www.salon.com/jan97/state970120.html <br>http://www.thecriticalvoice.com/runaway_capitalism.html

[tancred]

QUOTE: "Liberalism can be anti collectivist, pro market and pro pluralist, reaffirming the Constitutional system of checks and balances."

Talk about putting lipstick on a pig! Next thing you know, liberals will be claiming they invented the internet. ;)

[blp]

God, Jim, what the hell's going on with your coding? Makes a difficult post twice as hard to get to grips with.

Tancred, smirk and wink all you like, but you quoted incorrectly, leaving off the end of the sentence and thereby destroying its sense - exactly the kind of selective dissembling that rampant free marketeers like yourself always have to employ to make your points. ;)

[Oblivion437]

That's utterly disingenuous, is it not?

You're accusing someone of being deceptive, when the exact text is right above his post for anyone to read. In any case the entirety of the sentence was unnecessary as quoted or in its initial form (questionable, given the difficult syntax) because his point stands.

Then again, that's only if you ignore the term 'classical liberal' in one's study of liberalism.

I'll call you on your assertion, demanding you actually provide some kind of evidence, weight or value to your assertions.

Besides, the problem with statism isn't that it isn't expedient enough, or expedient, it's that it is a morally bankrupt paradox of a human condition, either unnecessary or utterly exacerbating of problematic conditions, it is in itself the moral lowground. It gets nothing done well, few things right, most things badly and the rest it manifests as a cancer on humanity. Invade a country, expand government, bigger welfare programs exacerbate poverty worldwide while initiative is suppressed through regulation. Eventually the disease kills the host, the society that has deigned to support that cute little baby crocodile gets eaten alive. The whole thing goes under and those who said, 'we warned you' are sadly ignored.

-edit-Minor mistake needed correcting.

[adam-smith]

i agree, i mean adam smith himself stated that government intervention leads to ineffiency and injustice within an economy.
is an influential statement of the case for laissez-faire, the concept that governments should not try to control or even direct economic activity. Instead he suggested it should be left to market forces to decide how much of a good to produce and at what price it should be sold at, based on the demand of consumers.
was the first of its kind, and it really lead the way for other great economists, like Keynes, to develop his ideas into what we have today.

[pjohna]

Hi:
Last posts were almost a year ago. Anyone still reading this? I'd like to make a general point rather than a specific reply.
Having read "The Wealth of Nations" I'm concerned at what appear to be misunderstandings of Smith. Let me comment on one such and if anyone picks it up, perhaps we could restart some dialog.
"Government Regulation". Whatever this modern and not very Smithian term means, Smith is widely quoted as being against it. It seems important to me, that, in order to understand Smith's position, we need to look at the actual text and the political and economic context in which it was written. "WON" wasn't just an exposition of how markets work but in part a polemic against the then prevailing mercantilist tradition. His criticism of "Government regulation" was mostly directed against those commercial interests promoting laws and regulations that would favor one sector of the economy (theirs) over others. It wasn't directed against regulation of work-place safety, for instance. There wasn't any back then to inveigh against and, given the quality of his work in moral philosophy, it's very unlikely that Smith would have objected. His target were things such as the Corn Laws, that imposed tariffs on imported corn (ie. wheat in English usage) that would bring the price of the import up till it matched the domestic price.
One more illustration: in his lengthy discussion of interest rates, Smith makes a very convincing argument that attempts ot hold interest rates down by law or regulation to some arbitrarily determined "just" rate that was lower than the free market rate would invariably drive lending into a black market with rates higher that the free market rate because now it would have to cover the additional costs associated with being clandestine and with occasionally being caught and punished. He concludes the chapter with a short statement saying that a regulation forbidding rates notably HIGHER than the market rate to protect the unwary against usuary would be fully justifiable and would NOT distort the market. I can readily imagine Smith the moralist applauding punitive regulations against the exorbitant interst rates charged, for instance, by the credit card industry, by means of which many of the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us are daily robbed of the little that they have. These rates are also an apt illustration that markets are no panacea. A free market is supposed to bring these rates down to "market rates". It hasn't. Of course there is a case to be made that the market may not, in fact, be "free".
Any interest? (woops! an inadvertent pun - OK I'll leave it)