School Monkeytoe on capitalism

[Monkeytoe]

Title says it all, eh? I just noticed, after looking for responses to some monkey's (locked?) thread about the auction house that there seemed to be an interest in discussing the principles of free market economics. I'm all for that. So, tell me what you know about economics.

[unionyes]

Title says it all, eh? I just noticed, after looking for responses to some monkey's (locked?) thread about the auction house that there seemed to be an interest in discussing the principles of free market economics. I'm all for that. So, tell me what you know about economics.

There is no such thing as a free market. There are always some rules, made by someone. And as anyone knows, those who make the rules usually win the game. It should be pointed out here that in a truly 'free' market with no rules, one could amass wealth at gunpoint as legitimately as one could amass wealth by hard work and shrewd investment, as it is merely the existence of a 'rule' that makes one method illegal and the other legal. Taking someone's wealth by gunpoint accomplishes much the same effect as a hostile takeover.

In a capitalist system, in theory the rules are made by the market through supply and demand. In practice, the rules are usually made by those who control the wealth. When the richest 3% of the population control over 50% of the wealth, they obviously will act to preserve what they have, and gain more besides. They will use that wealth to influence policy, annihilate their competitors, and maintain the status quo. This is not a free market, but one that is geared and manipulated to achieve a certain result, the creation of more wealth for those who control it.

In a communist system, in theory the economy is managed by the working class for the betterment of the entire society. In practice, it is run by the leaders of the political arm of the working class, and human nature usually wins out and those with power over the economy use that power to better their own position. This is also not a free market, but an important distinction is that is is not 'less free' than a capitalist system, it merely has different stated goals, as well as different rules and decision makers, and thus a different set of problems when things go wrong.

If you want a 'free' market, you may be living in a fantasy world. Throughout recorded history, there has always been some person, group, or caste who made the rules, and thus manipulated the system for their benefit. Examples would include the Enclosure Act which 'granted' land to nobles and reduced the working class to serfdom, slavery, the Indian caste system, and many more.

The closest thing that we could get to a 'free market' would be a system that has rules that make things level for everyone. Thus far, the world has not been able to produce such a system in any group larger than three people.

[Pellegro]

Nice Unionyes !!!

Good power analysis. Marx would be proud.

What do you want ot know about economics? Books - aye, libraries - have been written.

While Unionyes's analysis (IMO) is pretty spot-on right, economics as applied to the AH work a little different. The "rule makers" (TURBINE) are not traditional rule makers trying to horde/guard their wealth .....

Anyhow ... can you narrow the field a bit? I'd love some intellectual banter.

[arminius]

Union's explanation is, as noted, Marxist. So take that for what it is worth.

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Read it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Advanced readers or those otherwise looking for more can try this book.

_

[Hafeal]

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Better yet, read the unedited thoughts and words of the original author: here

[unionyes]

Union's explanation is, as noted, Marxist. So take that for what it is worth.

Buy this book (if the Man has deemed it in His Class interest to let you have enough money to) or borrow it from the library (if you are one of the Oppressed Masses).

Read it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: Advanced readers or those otherwise looking for more can try this book.

_

Of course, those in power, if they are smart (and they usually are) make it an imperative to influence the educational system and the media, and through those forums make such words as 'Marxist' somehow dirty words. I suppose that is to be expected, although I can't bring myself to accept it.

And of course I have enough money to buy the book. I may have even read it already, I usually try to keep up on that sort of thing when time permits. If I didn't have enough money to purchase a book, I might be tempted to wake up and revolt. The difference between 'money' to buy books and pay my DDO sub and 'money' to own and control the means of production is vastly different on orders of magnitude. Please don't oversimplify. BTW, being poor is no crime (it shouldn't be, anyways), and is NOT an indicator of mental prowess, work ethic, or general fitness to survive. If that was the case, the owner of the widget factory would work 3000 times harder (to correspond with a CEO's average 3000X compensation vs. a laborer in his employ), but if you were to follow them around, I would bet that the widget solderer works a lot harder than the CEO, for a lot less money, but if he demands more he is 'greedy' and 'lazy'.

As for Adam Smith, it seems to me that the 'invisible hand' he speaks of seems to have it's middle finger extended to 98% of the population at any given time. Surely a system worth keeping....oh wait, of course it is, because I MIGHT BE THE NEXT ROCKEFELLER!!!!!! Yeah right.

Myth: Work hard, save your money, have faith in the system, and you will own the company one day.

Fact: Work hard, save your money, have faith in the system, and your bank will lose your money in a 'market adjustment', the system that you fight hard to support will leave you behind, your retirement will be spent saying, 'Welcome to Wal Mart, how may I help you?', and you will NEVER have that house on the hill. Unless the rich folks leave that neighborhood behind, then you can have it, but they have moved on to bigger and better things.

But rest assured, you will ALWAYS have almost enough money to get by. At least enough people will have almost enough to get by, and you are most likely to be in that group, although some will not. But not enough will be desperate enough to overthrow the system. Do you really think that those who own the means of production are stupid enough to allow enough people to be desperate enough to revolt at any one time? It has happened, of course, in Russia, Cuba, Nepal, and various other places.

But I do have a question for ya.

Why is it that a 'free market' system established in one of the most prosperous nations on earth can't provide universal health care to the same standard as a small island nation that has suffered under a trade embargo for decades?

Just a question..............

[arminius]

Better yet, read the unedited thoughts and words of the original author: here

Yes there is always that option, but yikes! There is some serious digression and anachronisms in there. Like trying to get something out of Sartre's Being and Nothingness (as opposed to the plays and novels, which get his point across much better) instead of reading what others write about Being and Nothingness. I heartily recommend the latter course.

And Unionyes, yes, to me Marxist is a dirty word. I am sensitive to the whole "killed 100+ million people" thing, which I guess makes me a softie. Nobody here is going to stand up for National Socialism, are they? Then why stand up for International Socialism? Does that 10x higher kill count somehow make it cleaner?

But beyond that, it doesn't do one very much good to be defined by the opposition. One should at least hear the pros first, before the cons. Otherwise the cons aren't in context.

And no one said the United States can't socialize medicine. It is that doing so would be a stupid idea. Socializing medicine doesn't make it free, it just shifts the costs from the person being treated to people who aren't being treated, while at the same time removing market incentives for efficiency. I don't want to have to wait 6 months for an MRI, nor do I want all innovation to stop. Every wonder why so many new drugs and treatment technologies are created in the United States? How many come from Canada again? How about the EU?

I am in favor of freedom. Economic freedom is as critical an aspect of freedom as intellectual or religious or political or social freedom. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is as fundamental to the essence of who we are as individuals as any other question to be had. Giving that decision to a bureaucrat behind a desk in the Central Planning Office does not make the end result any more fair or efficient or right. Giving the decision of what one buys or owns or consumes to that same bureaucrat or any other has no better result.

For crying out loud, we play a game the greatest strength of which is individual choice. That is what sets DDO apart from WoW and the others, an ability to make characters so different from others that they are completely gimped and useless. That freedom gives us the sense of accomplishment that when we do make something not gimped and useless, it is meaningful.

_

[Missing_Minds]

Why is it that a 'free market' system established in one of the most prosperous nations on earth can't provide universal health care to the same standard as a small island nation that has suffered under a trade embargo for decades?

But is the level of health care there equal to that which is possible here? Of that I have no clue.

[unionyes]

Yes there is always that option, but yikes! There is some serious digression and anachronisms in there. Like trying to get something out of Sartre's Being and Nothingness (as opposed to the plays and novels, which get his point across much better) instead of reading what others write about Being and Nothingness. I heartily recommend the latter course.

And Unionyes, yes, to me Marxist is a dirty word. I am sensitive to the whole "killed 100+ million people" thing, which I guess makes me a softie. Nobody here is going to stand up for National Socialism, are they? Then why stand up for International Socialism? Does that 10x higher kill count somehow make it cleaner?

But beyond that, it doesn't do one very much good to be defined by the opposition. One should at least hear the pros first, before the cons. Otherwise the cons aren't in context.

And no one said the United States can't socialize medicine. It is that doing so would be a stupid idea. Socializing medicine doesn't make it free, it just shifts the costs from the person being treated to people who aren't being treated, while at the same time removing market incentives for efficiency. I don't want to have to wait 6 months for an MRI, nor do I want all innovation to stop. Every wonder why so many new drugs and treatment technologies are created in the United States? How many come from Canada again? How about the EU?

I am in favor of freedom. Economic freedom is as critical an aspect of freedom as intellectual or religious or political or social freedom. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is as fundamental to the essence of who we are as individuals as any other question to be had. Giving that decision to a bureaucrat behind a desk in the Central Planning Office does not make the end result any more fair or efficient or right. Giving the decision of what one buys or owns or consumes to that same bureaucrat or any other has no better result.

For crying out loud, we play a game the greatest strength of which is individual choice. That is what sets DDO apart from WoW and the others, an ability to make characters so different from others that they are completely gimped and useless. That freedom gives us the sense of accomplishment that when we do make something not gimped and useless, it is meaningful.

_

Gotta set the record straight.

Marx has killed nobody. You must be thinking of someone else.

Stalin killed a lot of people. So has Bush. Heck, Winston Churchill killed lots of people too, for that matter, and may as well throw in the Catholic church while we are at it. If body counts were indicative of correctness of doctrine, we would all be in trouble. Of course, it is quite common for that to be brought up by capitalists pointing at communist dictators and saying 'killers!'. You do realize that your current president (and as you live in a democracy, that means that YOU the people get some credit too) is responsible for the deaths of a lot of Iraqis (they don't even count the dead civilians, how arrogant and uncaring is that), and the system you purport to defend is responsible for such 'winning' ideas as slavery and colonialism. If you count up the dead Indians, Chinese, South Americans, Central Americans, and South East Asians who died as a direct result of either outright invasion or colonial subjugation, you will see the capitalism has killed more than communism by several degrees of magnitude. In case you are not aware, colonialism and invasion are, for the most part, driven by capitalist economic needs, to open new markets, secure cheap supplies of resources and labor, secure trade routes, that kind of thing. So by all means, lets count dead people and make our decisions based on that. You would lose.

Or else we can make our decisions as to which system is 'best' by the results.

Where I live, we ALL have access to medical care. Yes, sometimes we wait. So what? We all get excellent health care.

Here is a little quiz. Pick an answer....

You have an undiagnosed injury, that could be serious but probably isn't. It sure hurts, though. You need some expensive tests. Down the street, the child of a poor family with no means to pay for medical care has the same injury. What system would you want to have?

1. A system that treats you today because you have money, but lets the kid die because he can't afford to pay for treatment.

2. A system that treats you first because you can pay, charges you some extra because they have to take charity cases due to some liberal do-gooder law, and treats the kid when they can fit him in, although they probably cut a few corners because it isn't like he is paying.

3. A system that looks at need, treats the one who needs it most, first, and then the next one. No question about ability to pay is ever asked, the decision is simply based on need and urgency.

Would the answer be different depending on the nationality of the child? If you knew the child or not? What issues the parents had? If so, why?

BTW, lots of drugs come from Canada. Where we 'fall behind' the US is in the development of things like dog antidepressants, the umpteenth version of the same antibiotic or erectile dysfunction medication, that kind of thing. Sure, a lot more drug patents are issued in the US, but many of them are molecularly minor changes to existing, successful drugs, have the same effect of something out on the market already, and are solely designed to get a piece of the market share of an existing drug.

When a society recognizes that it is important and beneficial to that society to ensure that everyone has adequate medical care, then that society can and should take steps to provide it to everyone. I for one do not begrudge taxes that I pay that go to medical care, because a healthy society is in my own best interest. That should be obvious. If someone came to me and said 'the kid down the street needs an operation but his family has no money, can you chip some in?' I would say sure, if I can. That is why paying for universal medical care through taxes is great. I pay when I do well, I don't pay when I don't do well, and me, my family, everyone for that matter, can get medical care.

However, when a society decides that making a buck is the most important thing, then they take steps to make sure that anyone who provides any sort of service does so only to make a profit. Profit is a harsh mistress, and has resulted in many, many people dying in the US due to lack of medical treatment. Medical treatment that, it should be pointed out, was available. The only thing lacking was the ability to pay for it.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Good question. Communist kids get asked that all the time. The answers are a little different, mainly because the role models are different. Common answers in communist or socialist countries include factory worker, athlete, doctor (the USSR had the highest number of doctors per capita, Cuba is still right up there), lawyer, astronaut, premier, stuff like that. The only difference is you don't hear communist kids say they want to be a princess or a banker. Should also mention that in a communist country, kids get sent to university based on merit, rather than ability to pay. You don't get any 'would have gone to MIT but couldn't afford to, so I went to Grover Cleveland Community College' stories there. If you are smart enough to go, you go, end of story. You seemed to imply that people were forced into certain vocations, and that is not the case.

Individual choice is woven throughout the fabric of communism, if you aren't blinded to it. Marxist theory in a nutshell as far as economic systems go.....

1. Determine what is a necessity. This is basically anything you don't want people to have to buy a ticket too, such as highways, schools, roads, medical care, water and sewer, firefighting, stuff like that. These things are run by the state, on a not for profit basis, and the services provided to the citizens at cost.

2. Determine what is not a necessity in and of itself, but rather part of a group that is necessary. Things like beef, wheat, dairy products, vegetables, are each not necessities but together, as food, are vital. The state provides these things, on a not for profit basis, provided to the citizens at cost. Various management techniques such as price manipulation are utilized to control the supply and demand of these items. For example, if there is a chicken disease, the price of chicken would go up, and the price of beef would go down to encourage the consumption of that which is more readily available. (In a capitalist system, the price of chicken would drop as they struggled to maintain market share, and the price of beef would skyrocket as demand increased).

3. Determine what is not a necessity. These things are not administered by the state, but left to individual ingenuity to create, develop, and distribute. The only control over these commodities is that of any nation, regulation for safety. For example, cocaine would not be allowed to be processed in this category, nor would land mines be permitted to be sold at a road side stand.

Unfortunately, I have just realized how long this post is. Debunking myths about communism or international socialism is one of my favorite pastimes, right up there with DDO, and there is a LOT more to be said, but that's enough for now.

[JayDubya]

I'm going to completely ignore UnionYes, and everything he's said. You can take that as you will.

The concept of the Free Market is, at the core, that you (or I, or anyone) is free to choose whether or not we want to buy something at a given price.

That's all that you need, at the base, to create a free market. Everything else about the system self-organizes from that concept - that you get to decide whether you will pay $15.99/month for that game, or if it just isn't worth it to you anymore.

At this level of abstraction, Free Market economics is virtually indistinguishable from evolution - the basic concept of evolution (changes in the frequency of genetic code over time) is caused by billions of yes/no decisions - did creature "X" reproduce before it died. Everything in nature can be explained from this basic concept - all the complexity, all the genetic winning and losing is basically determined by that decision point - how successful are the individual members of "species X" at reproducing?

The Free Market acts in a very similar way - "Did you buy product X at this price?" All companies, all products, all systems and services start from this premise - how successful is company X at selling its products? All the complexity in the market builds up from the buying/selling decisions of billions of people, every day. These decisions determine the demand for various products. The demand for these products essentially determines how much of those products will be supplied.

To be clear, products are not like genes in the sense that they have DNA, but they do have the same "succeed/fail" relationship.

Now, what happens when you, as an individual, and all of your decisions, are multiplied by 6 billion, and each of those 6 billion decision-makers is a different person, with different preferences, and different interests. Each of them "vote with their dollars" on which products interest them. Some choose to buy computers that are inexpensive, but slow. Others feel compelled to buy computers that are expensive but fast. Some buy lots of software for their computers, others buy very little.

If we just look at MMOs for a minute, you'll see the freedom of these decisions in action - does Blizzard in any way force you to play or buy World of Warcraft? Does Turbine or Atari have any mechanism to make you pay for DDO? You choose to pay, and you choose when to stop paying. Eve Online, Ultima Online, Everquest, AoC, etc - all of these games are things that people freely choose to buy, or not buy. No coercion, no force. From the millions of people who play games, their desires and interests emerge - many people prefer WoW, because of its relative simplicity, because of the number of other players (who also freely chose to play), because of its features. Others don't like fantasy, and prefer sci-fi. Others prefer naked breasts and choose their MMOs accordingly. Each of them is acting in their own self-interest, and choosing what works for them from the pool of available games. Until DDO came along, I, for example, chose not to pay for any MMO, because none of them met my standards of features/price/etc. I was free to choose not to play.

Another example is food - some people prefer to buy organic, others not so much. Some prefer to buy cheap, others prefer to buy the most expensive food they can find. Again, from this variety of interests and demands, many many types of food exist - consider the difference in price between a high-end dark chocolate bar, and a Hershey bar. Some would have you believe that Hershey "forces" you to buy their chocolate, but I have yet to see any plausible explanation of how this could occur.

So how do new products get created?

New products get created because someone takes a risk. They make a gamble that the new software they write, or the new kind of cereal they make, or the new website they build will have a lot of customers, who are willing to pay (or to have someone pay for the right to advertise to them). Most of the progress in our society - the advances in standards of living, in quality of life, in health and automation and so forth, come from these people who are willing to take risks because they believe in something new. Roomba, is a great example of a device that someone decided was sure to be a big hit, and it was. The Apple Newton, on the other hand, is a device that wasn't a big hit. The iPod, and the iPhone and the Blackberry were all other products that made it big, while Motorola's Iridium satellite network was a multi-billion dollar flop. Over and over again, we see this - based on the individual decisions of millions of consumers, various products succeed and fail, and change the dynamics of the market.

But of course, humans are smart, and they can learn from observation and each other. The innovations that feed the iPhone and Roomba are rapidly recreated by other companies, who attempt to make better or cheaper or more advanced or more effective versions of the same thing, or perhaps to take existing concepts and take them in new directions (robot lawnmowers, for example). And all of them are trying to find ways to get as many people as possible to buy their products - they are competing with each other for your attention and your support. And the result of all of this competition is a huge benefit for you, for me, for everyone. When an average poor person can own multiple color TVs, refrigerators, two cars, broadband internet, some of the highest quality water and food on the planet, and still be considered poor... that is a system worth admiring.

The Endless War

Evolution is an arms race between species - benign and neutral mutations changing the abilities of various species, predator and prey, parasites and symbionts, constantly, all the time, all around us. They are constantly at war with each other for breeding rights and access to food and water and other resources. If you think about it, trees grow so tall because they are desperately trying to outcompete each other for sunlight.

But none of evolution requires a central designer, and, other than the fairly limited hand of human husbandry, there is no goal or objective in evolution - there is simply the decision point - "Did individual X reproduce before it died?" And yet, from that simplest of concepts, we have the huge variety of earthly creatures that exist today, even in unimaginably hostile environments.

The free market is an arms race betwen products and companies - innovations and ideas are all trying to win your interest, to provide the things that you will want to buy. The last two hundred years of economic progress has all been made possible through this competition - the rise and fall of entire industries determined by the innovations over the years - the collapse of the telegraph and the horse-and-buggy, and the whale-oil, and the gaslight, and the wax record, and the railroad and the pay phone industry all destroyed (or diminished) by the new technologies that surpassed them.

At the time, these industries were huge and powerful. The railroad tycoons were incredibly wealthy and very powerful politically. Everyone depended on rail to get their products. But yet, the railroad industry is a pale shadow of what it once was. Why? Because newer innovations (cost effective combustion engines, better road technology, advances in shipping and airplanes) created large-scale competition, and the rail systems, even with all their power and money, could not force people to ride rail instead of planes, to ship by freight car instead of freighter.

Issues and Controversy

If you take a slice of time and say "This is how it will always was, and always will be", you are crippling yourself in heartbreaking ways. You are ignoring the overwhelming tide of innovation that lifts all of us further every year. Think about what life was like in 1970 - no DVDS, no cellphones, no generally accessible Internet, primitive medical technology, lousy safety standards for cars, poor air and water quality, high infant mortality, fairly low life expectancy. A millionaire in 1970 would find the world of a poor person in 2008 to be a paradise in comparison.

Some say that the market is controlled by industries who want to keep you poor. I say - look at the world around you - you are free to choose how you transport yourself, what kind of food you dine on, in what ways you entertain yourself or simplify your life, or communicate with others. Yes, some choices can be inconvenient - but that does not make them impossible choices. Some choices may be expensive, but there are often less expensive choices, that you choose not to make. In every cry of "tyranny" with regard to the free market, I almost always hear "inconvenience that I do not wish to bear".

Do we live in a perfectly free market? No - there are some things that you cannot buy, at least legally, at a price both you and the seller would be willing to pay. There are also situations where governments step in and control the supply or restrict the demand of products. There are also, in limited cases, groups of companies/organizations that attempt to control the supply of certain goods to keep prices high. In most of these cases, however, people are still free - they can choose to buy less of something at the higher price, or, alternatively, create new things that compete with the high priced thing. Case in point - examine the spectacular advances in solar and nuclear power technologies over the last decade. Do you think Exxon or Texaco wants to see large-scale nuclear power, or solar arrays? No, of course not. But yet those technologies soldier on, and continue to improve by leaps and bounds.

In Summation

Out of very simple interactions, incredibly complex results can arise, without any guiding force, without a "designer" lurking in the shadows, playing the puppeteer. This is the free market - interactions between individuals, making their own choices of their own free will, resulting in incredibly sophisticated and amazing results. That's what the free means - not that it is "free of influence", but that the decisions of the participants are (in almost all cases) freely made.


I wrote this in haste, and I don't want people to think that my description is sufficient, or complete. A good place to start for a more scholarly (but accessible introduction would be here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Principles_of_Economics). Philosophically, I am generally a follower of the Austrian Schoo of economics, which celebrates the power of the individual to make their own decisions. There are other schools/philosophies, and they have their merits and good points as well.


I will leave with one last point - anytime you are in a conversation/discussion with someone, and they say that you are not free, that your choices and rights are constrained by powers that you cannot perceive, pay special attention to "what in it for them" if you accept their claims. In almost all cases, when someone tells you "X is controlling you", it will be followed by "Which is why you must give me your money and power, so I can fight X for you."

Which is really just another form of control.

[Vardak]

Marxist is a dirty word.

I am in favor of freedom. Economic freedom is as critical an aspect of freedom as intellectual or religious or political or social freedom. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" is as fundamental to the essence of who we are as individuals as any other question to be had. Giving that decision to a bureaucrat behind a desk in the Central Planning Office does not make the end result any more fair or efficient or right. Giving the decision of what one buys or owns or consumes to that same bureaucrat or any other has no better result.

_

Marxist is not a dirty word. It merely represents the well thought out economic and political ideas of an individual. History seems to have demonstrated these ideas to be incorrect.

The thing is, capitalism is a fine idea so long as you happen to have some capital. It doesn't seem to work out so well for those that don't. Acts of genocide we've witnessed in the last decade or two have been largely based on upside down economics of a given region. The wealthy minority is not well treated when the poor majority seizes power in the manner that Marx theorized.

Our freedom to "do what you want to be when you grow up" is more or less an disillusion. The truth is little Johny is limited by the social and economic standing of his parents, his own intellect and desire, and the willingness to act. The sad fact is we have probably lost more geniuses to our flawed educational system than we have fostered. That said I wonder how many Stalin simply executed?

It's not a simple discussion at all.


OH! and the odds of this thread making more than 48 hours is very very low.

[unionyes]

Marxist is not a dirty word. It merely represents the well thought out economic and political ideas of an individual. History seems to have demonstrated these ideas to be incorrect.

The thing is, capitalism is a fine idea so long as you happen to have some capital. It doesn't seem to work out so well for those that don't. Acts of genocide we've witnessed in the last decade or two have been largely based on upside down economics of a given region. The wealthy minority is not well treated when the poor majority seizes power in the manner that Marx theorized.

Our freedom to "do what you want to be when you grow up" is more or less an disillusion. The truth is little Johny is limited by the social and economic standing of his parents, his own intellect and desire, and the willingness to act. The sad fact is we have probably lost more geniuses to our flawed educational system than we have fostered. That said I wonder how many Stalin simply executed?

It's not a simple discussion at all.


OH! and the odds of this thread making more than 48 hours is very very low.

Just got back from a work road trip, and it looks like this thread did in fact make it more than 48 hours. I am surprised too.

An aside...Stalin was not a brutal dictator because he was a Communist. If you wish to judge an economic system based on the political brutality of a leader, then I would hold up Pinochet as a shining example. Or Noriega. Or Saddam Hussein, who also promoted free market enterprise, back when he was a friend of Americas because he was fighting with Iran. The opposite of Communist is NOT Democracy. The opposite of Communist is Capitalist. But that's a whole other thread.........

Thanks for ignoring everything I said, Dubya. It will make the revolution that much more surprising for you when it comes

To address the treatment of the well off minority when the poor majority seizes power.....

I too feel bad for the United Fruit Company. Those poor, poor, capitalists made a ton of money by absorbing virtually all of the arable land, using economic leverage to force farmers (many of whom had been farming that land for generations) off, and changing the production over from balanced food crops to fruit. Why fruit? Because there was a market for it in a country that had more money than the Cubans who were the ones who were actually growing the fruit. Of course, the Cubans didn't like it, and upon the arrival of a motivated, charismatic leader, overthrew the rule of the United Fruit Company, took back the land, and gave them the boot. I am reminded somewhat of another country that revolted over taxation without representation, and I think there was some tea and people dressed up like aboriginals involved too. Those poor English were not treated so well by the folks who revolted, either. I guess that the winners of any conflict write the history books.

The problem with voting with dollars is that it sets up socially unacceptable situations, like the one above. Is it a good thing to have people starve or be malnourished because the people who control the land they live on can make more money selling fruit to another country than they can by using the land to feed the inhabitants? Of course not. But if voting with dollars is how it works, then that, and other similar situations, happens all the time.

Besides, voting with dollars is not democratic. Oddly enough, in America, the land of opportunity, most millionaires are only millionaires because of accident of birth. Not because they are more efficient, or motivated, or smart, or good business people. Someone in their family is or was, at some point in time, but not necessarily them. This creates a huge desire to maintain the status quo, because if I am rich through no fault of my own, and things stay the same, then, well, I will stay rich.

The US 'democracy' (actually a republic, but that's splitting hairs somewhat) has been nudged into this system as well. It now takes a lot of money to win an election for anything higher than dogcatcher. So, people who want to be elected have to have access to big money. That means that they have to make friends with the people who do have money, or have money themselves. And if those people have a vested interest in the status quo, well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist - or a cosmonaut to figure out that things are gonna be the same until something else happens. Then, of course, these politicians take this money and use it to convince the voters that they are going to look out for them. Hmmm. What if the voters interests are not the same interests as the money providers? Sort of sets up a conflict, doesn't it? A good example of this is the drilling for oil going on in America's national parks and reserves.

How does this all apply to DDO?

Well, we have plat farmers, who are 'free marketing' themselves like crazy. In a truly free DDO 'market', there would be no prohibition on plat farmers. They would be permitted to openly set up accounts, farm the game, and sell their stuff to whoever had the money to pay for it. The players would be able to 'vote with their dollars' and either use the farmers or not. Interestingly enough, prostitution, drugs, pornography of all varieties, and human slavery would also be acceptable in a 'free' market. Let the invisible forces of the free market weed out those things that are unacceptable to the people.

Plat farming is undesirable, however, so Turbine lays out a no plat farmer rule. The effect of this rule, if it could be enforced at all, would be to level the playing field for those of us who don't use plat farmers. That fancy weapon, armor, or item you have would have been looted by you, or you would have had to purchase it with resources that you looted yourself. You wouldn't get into a raid group with someone who didn't know how to play that well, but had used their resources to either buy an account or get power leveled, or twinked themselves like crazy with credit card plat.

However, the plat farmers continue to send me spam. Of course, this tells any serious student of economics that there are enough people using them that it is worth their while to send spam and stick around, because if they were not making a profit, then they would leave. The question remains, though, how much of a profit. If they are barely getting by, then they may not be here long. If they are wildly successful, then they may be here a lot longer than we think.

Marxist theory tells us that people who 'have' will defend what they have, and people who 'have not' will, in the right circumstances, take drastic measures to obtain what they need for survival. Granted this is not a 'personal survival' situation as much as it is a 'business survival' situation, but the theory remains the same.

Consider this possible scenario. The plat farmers are making a comfortable living. As they flood the game with more and more uber loot, the game community sharply divides into two groups, those who use the plat farmers and those who do not. Those who do use them have a decided 'advantage' in the game, as having some uber stuff makes it easier for you to complete tougher adventures, thus adding to your loot pile, and so on. Those of us (myself included) who do not use the plat farmers eventually grow more and more disturbed by this, and we lobby Turbine harder and harder to eliminate the plat farmers completely. Eventually Turbine takes steps to do so, or risk losing a large segment of their community. The plat farmers fight back in force. If they have the resources from selling items, they will attempt to alter the playing field so they can continue to sell items in spite of what the players say or do. This could mean either buying the game outright from Turbine, or buying enough of it that they can influence policy regarding plat farming, or spending lots of money on ways to get around the rules. If they are making enough money, it would just be a cost of doing business to set up PAID accounts to spam 'advertisements' to us all, even though they get suspended daily.

Those of you here who have been supporting the 'free market' should be consistent, and support the plat farmers right to exploit a market opportunity without interference. Let the players 'vote with their dollars' regarding the plat farmers, so to speak. Let the invisible hand of Adam Smith deal with the situation. Call Turbine ruthless dictators because they won't allow the fundamental freedom of the marketplace to determine the course of events. You could even go on and on about the ruthless oppression of the entrepreneurial spirit, the elimination of the 'freedom of choice', and the utter devastation that we non plat farm using players live in, unable to equip our 9th level Fighters with +5 mithril full plate, +5 mithril tower shields, +5 longswords of uberness, and greater false life items of heavy fortification. Heck, you may as well say that those of us who are against plat farmers are 'brainwashed' and just don't know better, and if we just had the chance to use a credit card to equip our toons we would see that it is the best way to play.

As for me, I will be consistent with my Marxist philosophy and, as the plat farmers are not a positive societal influence, and do harm rather than good (or even being neutral) to the community, I believe they should be eliminated as quickly and painlessly as possible. Perhaps they could be relocated to AoC or LOTRO. If they won't go willingly, then they must go unwillingly.

[Monkeytoe]

Hey wow. I wrote a nice long thing expressing my surprise that anyone bothered keeping this thread alive as long as they did and thanking you guys for telling as much as you did about economics. Then I hit [submit] and well, it told me log back in. So much for hacking out long improvised discourses in the DDO off topic forum.

Oh well.

The general drift of what I wrote was: In order to describe the best kind of economic system (which seems to be what was going on) you have to first describe what an economic system is supposed to do. After you explicitly state what the purpose of a system is, then you can rationally describe the best way of achieving that purpose. If you don't state what the system is supposed to do, you can't describe the best way to make it do that.