Saudi-led Opec Plus cartel decided to cut production by 2m barrels a day – the opposite of what Biden administration officials had pleaded with the Saudis to do. After the shock of that embarrassing announcement, which threatened to raise gas prices around the US midterm elections, Biden vowed: “There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done.”
A “free market” as the term is usually understood is a well-defined thing, which of course has many problems and failure modes, but is not well-represented by a market dominated by a large cartel routinely controlling prices. It is also not the same thing as capitalism.
How is it defined? Usually understood by whom? Are you talking about abstract concepts or historical examples of “free markets” and their development?
Cartels and monopolies are the result of “free markets” btw. The strongest agents will organize to dominate and destroy the competitors however they can.
The free market is an abstract concept, one which rarely exists in anything like its ideal form due to its instability under current conditions of capitalist development. The original definition given by classical economics is still the prevalent one. Despite what slogans from some proponents of capitalism would have you believe, not only are free markets not identical with it, but capitalism tends to take markets further and further from anything resembling their theoretically ideal state of freedom.
‘Free-markets’ has never referred to a philosophical, moral or spiritual idea of freedom, except when used rhetorically in discourse by the right, especially since Thatcher and Reagan, i.e. the full onset of the Neoliberal counter-revolution.
Economists do not study the idea of ‘freedom’. That is a philosophical concept. When they say ‘free’, and you actually look at the structure of the propositions they use, they are referring essentially to the private autonomy of firms as ‘free’ to the degree that there is no non-private, social, public or governmental interest (it’s not only the government, as this definition implies that trade-unions make a market ‘less free’).
There is absolutely nothing inconsistent between free-markets and market concentration. If by a free-market, we use the standard neoclassical meaning of one where there is no/very little/minimal government or public regulation to influence demand or supply or the price mechanism, which in material terms implies that those are completely controlled by private capital and its owners, then there is nothing stopping this from being an oligopoly, a cartel or a monopoly. Actually lack of public regulation has generally lead to more concentration, not less.
I think you are confusing the neoclassical ‘perfect competition’ (which does not, and cannot, exist in the real world) and neoclassically defined ‘free’-markets.
Please don’t try drop econ-101 learns on Marxists if you don’t know the definitions of free-market economics, perfect competition or oligopolies.
If it involves “an oligopoly, a cartel, or a monopoly” then it is not a “free market” according to what they taught me in econ 101, everything convincing that I’ve heard since, and what Adam Smith explicitly wrote down when he first described the idea. Wikipedia cites Karl Popper in saying that in classical economics a free market is one that’s “free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities,” and that it’s a market in which economic rents are minimised. A monopoly is by definition antithetical to a free market. Any neoliberal suggestions that attacking the whole concept of public regulation of markets will always make them more free are simply lies, and should not be accepted.
That there is at present little or nothing preventing any imperfectly but approximately free markets that might otherwise exist devolving into less free ones dominated by monopolies, cartels, corrupt and captured regulators, out-of-control rent seeking, frauds that rely on information asymmetry, and other such perversions is (obviously, I thought) the reason why I’ve been consistently saying that “free” markets are not something we see much of in reality. Perhaps that’s not exactly congruent with Marxism, but I don’t think it’s inconsistent with it either.
“The free market is so wonderful that the slightest unpleasant activity makes the free market no longer wonderful but that isn’t the free market’s fault except everyone with means is able to make that unpleasant activity happen, which again isn’t the free market’s fault and we can not possibly have a better system.”
A free market is a distinct concept from a perfect market. You’re describing a perfect market operating under ideal conditions.
A free market with laissez-faire policies lends itself directly to cartels and monopolies because a perfect market cannot exist without government intervention. Maybe you should’ve paid attention in ECON 101.
A free market is a distinct concept from a perfect market. You’re describing a perfect market operating under ideal conditions.
The free market is a theoretical model assuming perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information and it is indeed ideal within those assumptions. The issue is that it’s not realistic. Real-world markets can be brought closer to the free market ideal by regulation. Don’t let those laissez-faire fucks confuse you what they’re peddling, by equivocation, is unregulated markets which are the complete opposite of free, what they want is institutionalised market failure.
Next time a “free market advocate” shows up on your doorstep, tell them to give you all their trade secrets so that you have better information about everything, it’s what they want, after all.
I dunno, maybe they changed the terminology since I took it. Seems to me “free market” was not previously imbued with all that meaning you guys are reading into it. I’m not convinced it isn’t just an Americanism. To me a “free market” is simply one that’s substantially free of distortion, resembling to a notable extent a perfect market. But I’ll certainly avoid the phrase in future.
A “free market” is an unregulated market. At least, that’s how it’s sold in politics. An unregulated market lends itself towards cartels and monopolies.
Indeed, I am convinced of it. Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to help fill in my ignorance there. It was a pleasure being your crazy person on the internet for the day.
I thought you liked the free market?
It’s only free for American companies.
When Canadian companies like Bombardier try to get involved in the free market, they get blocked by the US DOJ until they run out of money.
Canadian private jet companies just can’t catch a break1.
1 Unless its a federal election year, and Québec seats are up for grabs.
Lol fair enough, but the CSeries is legitimately a really nice plane so it’s a shame that it ended up getting sold to Airbus for pennies.
That classic free market system where a cartel has regular meetings to set production levels to maximise their profits.
cartels are a free market force. Cartelisation is a natural consequence of market logic
Yes, actually
Actual free markets are almost as rare as actually existing socialism.
free market is when good so obviously when the market does something bad it must not be the market
the free market produced the triangle trade ffs
Really? I thought the most infamous example of triangular trade was more of a mercantilism thing.
Ah, of course, real capitalism has never been tried
A “free market” as the term is usually understood is a well-defined thing, which of course has many problems and failure modes, but is not well-represented by a market dominated by a large cartel routinely controlling prices. It is also not the same thing as capitalism.
How is it defined? Usually understood by whom? Are you talking about abstract concepts or historical examples of “free markets” and their development?
Cartels and monopolies are the result of “free markets” btw. The strongest agents will organize to dominate and destroy the competitors however they can.
The free market is an abstract concept, one which rarely exists in anything like its ideal form due to its instability under current conditions of capitalist development. The original definition given by classical economics is still the prevalent one. Despite what slogans from some proponents of capitalism would have you believe, not only are free markets not identical with it, but capitalism tends to take markets further and further from anything resembling their theoretically ideal state of freedom.
‘Free-markets’ has never referred to a philosophical, moral or spiritual idea of freedom, except when used rhetorically in discourse by the right, especially since Thatcher and Reagan, i.e. the full onset of the Neoliberal counter-revolution.
Economists do not study the idea of ‘freedom’. That is a philosophical concept. When they say ‘free’, and you actually look at the structure of the propositions they use, they are referring essentially to the private autonomy of firms as ‘free’ to the degree that there is no non-private, social, public or governmental interest (it’s not only the government, as this definition implies that trade-unions make a market ‘less free’).
There is absolutely nothing inconsistent between free-markets and market concentration. If by a free-market, we use the standard neoclassical meaning of one where there is no/very little/minimal government or public regulation to influence demand or supply or the price mechanism, which in material terms implies that those are completely controlled by private capital and its owners, then there is nothing stopping this from being an oligopoly, a cartel or a monopoly. Actually lack of public regulation has generally lead to more concentration, not less.
I think you are confusing the neoclassical ‘perfect competition’ (which does not, and cannot, exist in the real world) and neoclassically defined ‘free’-markets.
Please don’t try drop econ-101 learns on Marxists if you don’t know the definitions of free-market economics, perfect competition or oligopolies.
If it involves “an oligopoly, a cartel, or a monopoly” then it is not a “free market” according to what they taught me in econ 101, everything convincing that I’ve heard since, and what Adam Smith explicitly wrote down when he first described the idea. Wikipedia cites Karl Popper in saying that in classical economics a free market is one that’s “free from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities,” and that it’s a market in which economic rents are minimised. A monopoly is by definition antithetical to a free market. Any neoliberal suggestions that attacking the whole concept of public regulation of markets will always make them more free are simply lies, and should not be accepted.
That there is at present little or nothing preventing any imperfectly but approximately free markets that might otherwise exist devolving into less free ones dominated by monopolies, cartels, corrupt and captured regulators, out-of-control rent seeking, frauds that rely on information asymmetry, and other such perversions is (obviously, I thought) the reason why I’ve been consistently saying that “free” markets are not something we see much of in reality. Perhaps that’s not exactly congruent with Marxism, but I don’t think it’s inconsistent with it either.
lol
How do all these cartels keep getting in my free market? Gosh darn-it!
Markets unregulated tend towards oligopoly, cartels and monopoly over time. Free market is interchangeable with private autocracy.
“The free market is so wonderful that the slightest unpleasant activity makes the free market no longer wonderful but that isn’t the free market’s fault except everyone with means is able to make that unpleasant activity happen, which again isn’t the free market’s fault and we can not possibly have a better system.”
Yes, companies exist under capitalism.
A free market is a distinct concept from a perfect market. You’re describing a perfect market operating under ideal conditions.
A free market with laissez-faire policies lends itself directly to cartels and monopolies because a perfect market cannot exist without government intervention. Maybe you should’ve paid attention in ECON 101.
The free market is a theoretical model assuming perfectly rational actors acting on perfect information and it is indeed ideal within those assumptions. The issue is that it’s not realistic. Real-world markets can be brought closer to the free market ideal by regulation. Don’t let those laissez-faire fucks confuse you what they’re peddling, by equivocation, is unregulated markets which are the complete opposite of free, what they want is institutionalised market failure.
Next time a “free market advocate” shows up on your doorstep, tell them to give you all their trade secrets so that you have better information about everything, it’s what they want, after all.
I dunno, maybe they changed the terminology since I took it. Seems to me “free market” was not previously imbued with all that meaning you guys are reading into it. I’m not convinced it isn’t just an Americanism. To me a “free market” is simply one that’s substantially free of distortion, resembling to a notable extent a perfect market. But I’ll certainly avoid the phrase in future.
A “free market” is an unregulated market. At least, that’s how it’s sold in politics. An unregulated market lends itself towards cartels and monopolies.
Indeed, I am convinced of it. Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to help fill in my ignorance there. It was a pleasure being your crazy person on the internet for the day.
You’re one of the lucky 10,000 for today!
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welcome to monopoly capitalism, the inevitable end stage of free market systems
Yes