HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to OMFG this is frustrating

Its frustrating because we're talking about two different things.
ER — (archived)

I'm not denying that scarcity drives the price of a commodity up, or that a drop in demand pushes it down. What I am denying is that this simple (and yes, obvious) fact should not be interpreted as "The Law of Supply and Demand will GUARANTEE that crooked businessmen can never manipulate a market", and therefore it is not necessary to regulate them. Its not surprising they drum that into your head in ECON 101 until you actually come to believe it. The whole point of economic theory is not to understand what is happening, but to make excuses for it, and to convince the victims its just "market laws" and to reassure the perpetrators that they alone understand the system so they alone should determine how it operates.

Economics, as it is taught today, is designed to indoctrinate undergraduates that if we just leave the businessmen alone and let them do whatever they want the FREE FUCKING MARKET will always magically intervene and make sure economic justice is done. Therefore we do not need regulation, worker safety and health, environmental protection, labor laws, truth in advertising, consumer protections, product safety, unions or anything else that might conceivably inconvenience the business community. Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" will automatically intervene and punish crooked merchants, so we need absolutely no legal protection against them.

Simple economic laws (like S&D) do indeed exist, but they are not laws of physics, they are basically rules of thumb based on common sense. They are not a part of some fundamental structure of reality which makes it impossible for people with great economic power to exploit their workers, cheat their customers, swindle their suppliers and defraud there stockholders. Once you control the means of production, you can divert a small part of your resources to making sure the business environment is tailored to your needs and desires--not the society's. None of the other stakeholders has access to the resources, so they don't get a vote.

To use your ecological example, yes, predator and prey interaction naturally stabilize an ecosystem, and the entire system benefits from increased efficiency, biodiversity and robustness. But when the developer or logger or farmer or miner comes through and lays waste to the range, the natural feedback cycles cease to operate and the whole system collapses. And when the natural resource is exhausted, or the environment becomes uninhabitable, the human despoiler simply moves somewhere else and does it all over again. Monopoly is not a case of perverted or dysfunctional Capitalism, it is the natural final state of Capitalism when its left to itself without some form of democratic supervision.

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