[P2P-F] self-regulating markets

Tue Jun 21 10:12:29 CEST 2011

On 6/20/11, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis <xekoukou at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think by self-regulated he means that the government doesnt regulate the
> markets. He goes on to show that self-regulation is in fact regulation by
> few corporations, thus the free market is only a myth. He then goes to
> explain why free market proponents have promoted the idea that the state job
> is only  that of 'punishing' those who do not abide by the rules, and have
> withheld the true nature of the economy. That is what i understood by
> reading the synopsis.

The government still does regulate them, in a very real sense.  The
few large corporations wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for
taxpayer subsidies, government-enforced regulatory cartels, and
artificial property rights like IP.

There are two kinds of government intervention:  primary and
secondary.  Primary intervention is the basic structural privileges
which maintain corporate power.  Secondary intervention consists of
ameliorative regulations which limit the abuse and mitigate the bad
effects of the primary regulations

What the right-wing variant of "free marketer" means by deregulation,
in reality, is simply eliminating the secondary interventions while
leaving the primary interventions intact.

As Patrick suggests downthread, the state is the executive committee
and the ruling class and corporations act through the state to
regulate the economy.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html