you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Alan_Crowe 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

The phrase free market muddles together two ideas, that I'm going to call the pragmarket and the momarket

Pragmarket. Let us suppose that sandwiches are a legitimate product. This legitimizes bread, milling, flour, wheat, sowing, plowing. But legitimizing plowing legitimizes tractors and tractor engines, and lathes and machine tools to make them, and carbide tooling and industrial diamonds to shape the carbide tools and cubic hydraulic presses. Wow! That escalated quickly.

Notice how complicated industrial society is. You start with some legitimate goods and legitimacy ramifies, far beyond the scope of central planning. Any political ideology needs to accept the pragmarket, or it will be poor and weak.

Momarket. But where does legitimacy come from? How do we judge gambling, alcohol, prostitution, and other vices? The pragmarket doesn't tell us. All it says is how to organize the efficient production that lies behind simple goods, such as sandwiches, that we have judged legitimate by non-economic criteria. Liberalism outsources morality to the market. The Moral Market, or Momarket. Perhaps whores charge a minimum of $200 and johns pay a maximum of $100. Then the Momarket "bans" prostitution. But the market for most vices clears, and nearly everything is permitted.

Having split up the concept of the free market we can say yes to the Pragmarket, and prosper, while saying no to the Momarket, and arguing theology and ethics to decide whether doubtful goods and services are permitted.

[–]search_social 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Hi pragmarket/momarket is completely original and I have never heard it before. So were your writings on non-recourse and grim-span. Do you have another online presence anywhere? Thanks!

[–]Alan_Crowe 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you for the flattery. I find it very encouraging that some-one would remember a ten month old comment.

I used to have a website. The way back machine still has it. Sadly, age and chronic illness mean that I'm in my own grim-span. I hope to start polishing some essays, and submitting them to Saidit and the like. I've made a small start with http://alan.sdf-eu.org/banana-burning.html

[–]Node 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I find it very encouraging that some-one would remember a ten month old comment.

Install RES for saidit, then you too can tag users with notable quotes.

Not that they didn't remember, but I certainly wouldn't.