Axismaster
Active member
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2006
- Messages
- 296
- Reaction score
- 1
- Location
- Michigan
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Engimo said:
Comrade Brian said:Economic Left/Right: -10.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.62
As I thought, a Leftist Lunatic.
mixedmedia said:Economic Left/Right: -4.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.56
Happily in the corner with Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. We rock!
Engimo said:Yeah, probably because it doesn't work.
Axismaster said:WTF??? Haven't you ever heard of Hong Kong? Singapore? Switzerland? Even America at one point had a free market and the economy grew a lot better then. Seriously, there is an index released about which countries have the most economic freedom. Sadly, America has less and less economic freedom and our economy gets worse and worse. We for the first time are not in the top ten. Still, the top ten countries have economies getting better and better! Also, explain the reason that free-market nations like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland are so much richer than your communist friends in Venezuala and Cuba.
Engimo said:Perhaps the economy grew a lot better, but things like "workers", "children" and "consumers" weren't doing too well.
Need I remind you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor
Which led to, of course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
It may work for the economy, but it doesn't work for the people. And I'm not a communist, so please refrain from calling me one.
Axismaster said:Hey man, I never said that having a free market meant you couldn't protect people's rights. I am for child labor laws, minimum wage, and things like that. I also am against right to work laws because as a libertarian, I believe people should be able to form unions without intervention. Of course, those unions should be democratic like the Swiss unions unlike ours here. Still though, can you explain then why Switzerland has a free market economy and has a much higher average wage and far less poverty?
Wikipedia said:A free market is a market where all exchanges are made without coercion; all trades are voluntary. A free market may be said to exist for exchange of a single pair of commodities (for example, money being freely exchanged for bananas at a mutually agreed upon ratio), or the term may be used to refer to an entire economy.
Since no national economy in existence fully manifests the ideal of a free market as theorized by economists and ethicists, the term free market economy is used for a nation state's economy that approximates the ideal by virtue of having a government that engages in little or no interventionist economic regulation.
Wikipedia said:The laissez-faire school of economic thought holds a pure or free market view, that the free market is best left to its own devices; that it will dispense with inefficiencies in a more deliberate and quick manner than any legislating body could. The basic idea is that less government interference in private economic decisions such as pricing, production, and distribution of goods and services make for a better (more efficient) economy. Government incorporation of laissez-faire principles ended in the early 1990's with the realization of the empirical evidence against it.
Engimo said:...Then you're not for a free market.
Axismaster said:What? I don't think businesses have a right to coerce people, hell no! I just don't think government should regulate them in a way that clamps down growth, as they do nowadays.
Engimo said:Okay, then you're not for a free market, you're for a partially free market.
alphieb said:Economic Left/Right: -5.63
Social Libertarian?Authoritarian: -1.23
I knew that anyway.
Axismaster said:Look, I am not an anarcho-capitalist. I am not an objectivist. I am more or less a classical liberal while you are a socialist modern liberal. I am not for NO government intervention in the economy, I just think it should be kept to a bare minimum. I am more or less a Jeffersonian than an Ayn Rand worshipper.
Engimo said:Ahh, there we go.
If that's what you meant by having "faith in the free-market", I suggest that you just make a point to clarify a little more next time - talking about wanting a free-market immediately conjures up a system of entirely laissez faire economics.
galenrox said:I got pretty much libertarian
The Real McCoy said:5, -2. Bottom right quadrant. Near nobody famous.
That quiz pretty accurately describes me: a moderate, conservative leaning libertarian.
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