Comments Elsewhere

echidne: The book is so chock-full of stuff that a review can’t give examples of all of them.

Well, fair enough. But the examples given so far lead me to think that the book has a lot more to do with government-backed corporate kleptocracy than it has to do with free markets.

For example, I’m also passingly familiar with the forced retirement savings system that Pinochet instituted, as well as the Yet Another Damn Account plans that American right-wingers have introduced along similar lines. I don’t consider these free market reforms, or even transitional reforms toward a free market. They are just a different kind of state interventionism, hypocritically advanced by the kleptocrats and their hirelings under the name of the free market. A free market reform of a conventional government Social Security system would simply be to make contributions voluntary, and let people sock money away where they will. In a free market, the government does not force you to put away savings for retirement, and it does not force you to put those savings in a limited number of government-approved plans offered by an uncompetitive cartel of government-approved financial corporations.

Similarly, the crony-capitalist government auctions that often pose as “privatization” (they would more accurately be described as “privateering”) are, as you yourself mention, not good examples of free market processes. A free market way to turn a nationalized industry over into private hands would be simply to convert the government’s seized title into joint ownership by the people at large (as happened in Czechoslovakia), or by the users of a resource, or by the workers at a shop.

Of course, I haven’t yet given any argument as to whether truly free market reforms — rather than the kind of cock-eyed schemes that keep coming from the Chicago Boys, the IMF, and other professional privateers — would be workable, or whether they would be preferable to the existing governmental schemes. But whether workable or unworkable, they are what they are, and shouldn’t be confused with the pro-corporate interventionism promoted by “pro-business” economists.

echidne: But note that the concept of a “free market” is an ideological conservative one. It has no real meaning in economic theory.

I don’t think that the term is especially “conservative;” in the National Assembly, the advocates of laissez-faire sat on the Left, not on the Right.

I’m also not sure what you mean when you say that “free market” has no real meaning in economic theory. Could you explain some more?

swampcracker,

Would you rather that everybody’s house got equally devoured by the wildfires, just to be fair?

Firebreak is not going around forcing the government firefighters to provide a lower level of service than they were providing. Rather, they are voluntarily offering protection above and beyond what the government offers.

They’re not much different from private firms that sell electronic security or emergency-response systems to homeowners, elderly people, etc. All these goods and services cost money, and they’re usually only sold to people who have the bread to pay for them. It would be a fine thing if everyone could get valuable services regardless of their income level, and it would be noble either for the company or for conscientious people like you to launch a mutual aid or charity campaign to cover the costs of those services for those who cannot pay. But if there is no such effort, and the company does not provide its services gratis to people who do not or cannot pay, that hardly means that the company is actively injuring people, or that it’s imposing unequal burdens on folks.

echidne: I would love to learn more about the long-run effects of the free-market shock treatments.

What free-market shock treatments?

I can’t find one example of a free market reform in the cases you list. Rigged government auctions, subcontracting of nationalized monopolies out to privileged firms, and infusions of government cash from the IMF are certainly not examples of free markets. Let alone bringing in the government goon squad to crack unionists’ and dissidents’ heads. This sort of crap is often misrepresented as “free market” reforms by opportunistic advocates of it, but all these measures would more accurately be described as neo-mercantilism than as free market reforms.