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25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 4. Free market

[extent to which citizens can feely trade]

10 ideas
Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil [Kant, by Berlin]
     Full Idea: Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil.
     From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3
     A reaction: This is central to the idea of Kant as the main father of liberalism, the idea that every individual deserves respect, and hence has rights. The idea would also be a crucial element in Europe turning against slavery.
Communism abolishes private property and dissolves the powerful world market [Marx/Engels]
     Full Idea: It is empirically established that by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution, and the abolition of private property, which is identical with it, the power of the world market will be dissolved.
     From: K Marx / F Engels (The German Ideology [1846], §1.A)
     A reaction: They later dropped the abolition of private property as an aim. They were very early in spotting the problem of global capitalism. As long as there are scarcities of anything (e.g. Rembrandts) it is hard to imagine the disappearance of the market.
Hayek was a liberal, but mainly concerned with market freedom [Hayek, by Dunt]
     Full Idea: Hayek was a liberal (rather than a conservative), …but the individual liberty he cared about was not diversity or freedom of thought. It was freedom to operate in the market.
     From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]) by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: There seems to have been a drift from obsession with freedom to participate in the market, towards the less plausible idea that market forces can solve everything. I once met someone who was convinced the market could solve environmental problems.
Impeding the market is likely to lead to extensive state control [Hayek]
     Full Idea: Once the free working of the market is impeded beyond a certain degree, the planner will be forced to extend his controls until they become all comprehensive.
     From: F.A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom [1944]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 7
     A reaction: Hayek was terrified of totalitarianism (quite reasonably), but fascism and communism don't seem to have arisen in the way he describes. I'm not clear why sensible intervention in the market should slide down into nightmare.
If people hold things legitimately, just distribution is simply the result of free exchanges [Nozick, by Kymlicka]
     Full Idea: If we assume that everyone is entitled to the goods they currently possess (their 'holdings'), then a just distribution is simply whatever distribution results from people's free exchanges.
     From: report of Robert Nozick (Anarchy,State, and Utopia [1974]) by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 4.1.b
     A reaction: If people's current 'legitimate' holdings are hugely unequal, it seems very unlikely that the ensuing exchanges will be 'free' in the way that Nozick envisages.
Libertarians like the free market, but they also think that the free market is just [Kymlicka]
     Full Idea: Not everyone who favours the free market is a libertarian, for they do not all share the libertarian view that the free market is inherently just.
     From: Will Kymlicka (Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) [1990], 4.1.a)
     A reaction: Illuminating. It would appear that exploitation is possible within a strictly free market, so it seems unlikely that free markets are inherently just (unless you don't acknowledge that 'exploitation' is wrong).
I can buy any litre of water, but not every litre of water [Sorensen]
     Full Idea: I am entitled to buy any litre of water, but I am not entitled to buy every litre of water.
     From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], 6.3)
     A reaction: A decent social system must somehow draw a line between buying up all the water and buying up all the paintings of Vermeer. Even the latter seems wicked, but it is hard to pin down the reason.
Market prices indicate shortages and gluts, and where the profits are to be made [Wolff,J]
     Full Idea: The price system is a way of signalling and transmitting information. The fact that the price of a good rises shows that the good is in short supply. And if prices rise in a sector because of increasing demand, then new producers rush in for the profits.
     From: Jonathan Wolff (An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) [2006], 5 'Free')
     A reaction: [Woff is discussing Hayek] Why do we have a shortage of decent housing in the UK? Centralised economies lack this direct way of discovering where their efforts should be directed.
No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari]
     Full Idea: There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias, …and markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence.
     From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Cult')
     A reaction: Is this in theory, or in practice? In Sicily the free market has been a tool of the mafia.
A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik]
     Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge.
     From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3)
     A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do?