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Free societies are prosperous societies.

Free markets allow everyone to seek their own best interests - improving their lives, the lives of those they are close to, and by extension, all of us.

From the lens How Free Markets Would Make Our World A Better, Friendlier, and Safer Place.

"Civilization's development has always been initiated by individuals balancing demands within their intimate groups, and personal needs for independence and identity. Social engineers and central planners always error at this point. What they endeavor is to convert humankind from small, intimate, flexible tribes to a collective with one mind (their mind of course).

They want to make all the complex human herds and packs composed of individuals into a single hive of drones. They have always failed, they will always fail; for outstanding individuals will continue to emerge - imagining and accomplishing exceptional goals - changing everything."
Allan Wallace

Your comments will add another opportunity for readers to compare and contrast ideas. Let us know what you have learned or what bothered you most.

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cynthia-ann-leighton May 5, 2012 @ 4:46 pm | delete

Interesting! Not seen this type of information before. Thanks for sharing! Plus, nice lens - as in good info presented well.

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jjprusk Apr 29, 2012 @ 12:58 am | delete

I couldn't agree more.

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henryalvarez Apr 10, 2012 @ 3:16 pm | delete

What you shared are great insights with regards to free market. This is a huge help especially to us who aspire for new knowledge. Keep up the good work.

Arts

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GodlessHeathen Apr 1, 2012 @ 11:45 pm | delete

Capitalism is the best system in the world...I only wish we had Capitalism in the United States..

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sixstring314 Oct 11, 2011 @ 11:55 pm | delete

Be carefule not to over-emphasize the pros of free markets. I am all for economic growth, but your neo-liberal take on free markets leaves out some crucial things. For example, you say that tariffs are basically only a harmful thing. You give an arbitrary example in which State X manipulates tariffs to produce a mediocre product that they can sell at a competitive price. This is dystopian and overly mercantilist.

Free markets are great when they actually do all the things that you champion them for, however, there are huge problems with your logic. First off, your much-vaunted laissez-faire markets are not as "let do" as you would think. It takes quite a bit of tampering to maintain.

Also, it does not benefit everyone. Just ask LDCs like Jamaica. It is actually the hgihly-acclaimed economic liberal policies that creat vastly diparate levels of inequality between hegemonies like the US and LDCs like Jamaica. I will use your example of the oh-so-evil tariffs to show this. Since Jamaica gained its independence in the 60s, it did not have any guidance in how to govern itself - how could it? It had been a colony for centuries. Right off the bat, it ends up at the doors of the International Monetary Fund and is put through a Structural Adjustment Program that cuts its domestic market and social programs to pieces. Because of the 'free market,' Jamaica is dead in the water because it cannot produce any domestic goods to sell anywhere because there is no market at all. How can Jamaica compete with the rest of the world when it cannot even sell produce within its own borders because of cheap imports. Compounding the issue is the fact that bananas, their chief export, have been targeted by the US because it has a preferrential agreement with the UK, which promised to create a market for bananas there. We are not threatened by this in any way. We don't produce bananas, why should we care? Just because a little country like Jamaica has a small leg-up to jump-start its economy, we try to remove the 'evil tariff' because it isn't 'fair.'

Sorry to rant, but I see that you spent a lot of time on this post, but did not, in my opinion, give a very objective view. As I said, there are good things about the free market when it works, but it is not the democracy-promoting, pure force of nature that it is portrayed as in this article.

P.S.

Adam Smith believed in interventionalist policy. He was generally distrustful of businessmen and believed that they sometimes needed to be rescued from themselves.

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BFuniv.com Oct 12, 2011 @ 12:56 am | delete

Thanks for your comments. I won't respond to everything, there's enough on this page for folks to compare our views, that's why I wrote it -- to give the other side of what I was taught. Just a few quick points:

1) Former colonies never had a chance, precisely because America and other over-developed nations don't allow free trade. You don't need libraries full of rule books to define free. Free means doing what you want. Big bullies change the rules of trade to suit the influential within their own countries and feather their own nests. Your Banana's illustration seems to support this; if I understand what you said.

2) I don't promote democracy, and neither did the founders of the United States. A republic might work, it wasn't given much of a chance here. Democracies alway fail once voters realize they can steal a living from the productive.

3) When a country like Jamaica is loosed from some of the colonial bonds it is then held at knife point by the worst of thieves -- the bureaucrats from the former government.

As an aside, I find the banksters have performed a leveraged buyout of the world; Jamaica, the US, Great Brittan, and beyond. If you believe that is a free market in action I can see why you would rant. There are no markets anymore -- only manipulations. Once the current monetary system finishes collapsing it will be interesting to see what emerges. It will certainly be a new dark age for those that feel they have a birth right to wealth. We live in interesting times.

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BFuniv.com Aug 17, 2009 @ 8:23 pm | in reply to Spook | delete

It will take time. We are at the beginnings of a new era, our efforts are establishing foundations to build replacements for crumbling bureaucracies. Todays post on Seth's blog shows that efforts like BFuniv are having that desired effect.

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Spook Aug 17, 2009 @ 6:05 pm | delete

I couldn't follow the Iacocca video but I remember a time when the Japanese car industry was giving the American one a real thumping. The American government intervened as unconditional war conquerors and stymied it. I see all the great American car industries have reverted to the same boat. History has a way of repeating itself. I'm with you all the way but still think as individuals we have left it to late.

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California_Dreamin Apr 28, 2009 @ 2:01 pm | delete

I have lived in Japan for the past 20 years. This country does not believe in free trade. The Japanese believe that "Japan is a small country with no natural resources." Therefore it is put at a natural disadvantage and must export or perish. The Japanese do not see trade as a "win-win" situation, they see it as a zero-sum game.
I don't agree with that attitude, but the truth is they've been beating our pants off. I was born in 1960, and I can remember watching the news on an American TV when I was a kid. There are no American TVs now, and there may soon be no American cars. Japanese car makers now have about half of the American market. All foreign makers combined have only managed to capture 4% of the Japanese car market. More people should have listened to Lee Iacocca. What he is saying in this video is absolutely true.

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amandascloset0 Jan 8, 2009 @ 2:55 pm | delete

Another very well written lens! I so enjoy reading your lenses! So thorough and well done! Thank you for posting this. Not a fun subject but a very real and very serious issue that we either deal with or subject to.
Thanks again, 5 stars, fav'd!

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Squidoo-Pat Jun 16, 2008 @ 11:13 pm | delete

I love the Edward R. Murrow comment. That's exactly what has and is happening. More and more people are becoming weak knee'd sheeple.

A few weeks ago they had a news story where an old man was walking across the street and got hit. People who were walking down the sidewalk saw what happened and just kept on walking leaving the old man to lay half dead in the street! Finally some "brave" people went over to try and assist him. He ended up dying. People are so weak, scared and idiotic they couldn't figure out to go and help a man who just got hit.

If this is the current state of the American character-America is cooked and done.

Thanks for educating people on what is really important.