The great thing about free markets is that any country can do it. Free people thrive wherever they are.

Plenty of underdeveloped countries are free markets as well.

China is attempting to show that not even democracy is needed to be prosperous.

"underdeveloped" .... yeah ...

If you can start a store in a great market, with police, judicial system, little corruption, etc etc etc etc .. why wouldn't you?

Why are stores closing in SF and Chiraq?

What?

?

>>Plenty of underdeveloped countries are free markets as well.

All less developed free market economies have been free markets since relatively recently.

The wealthiest economies are generally those that adopted market based rules the earliest, e.g. the Anglosphere and North West Europe, which were free market based since the 19th century.

> Plenty of underdeveloped countries are free markets as well.

Example?

And you're right that democracy is not a requirement for free markets, though they usually go together.

Somalia and Yemen are about as free market as it gets.

(fact) Karoshi

I won't claim to know anything else about Japan. Would love to visit, but I'm not sure I'd love to be part of its economy as a salary man.

mortgage slavery is the common thread

for some reason this motivates people. primordial need for land ownership. the call of the feudalism.

engine runs out of steam once the growing cabal of landlords eat the last marginal production in excess of rate of interest

america has more land relative to its population so takes longer to nimbify it all

Why?

Seems to me owning what you create is the key, instead of having it ripped from your hands.

As if you can cleanly define "what you create". Or "you". Or "create".

Back to the philosophy playpen, John G.

I mean, yeah?

Markets are great at finding how much something is worth. uhhhh

Want to give some examples?

No examples needed. You can't adequately define "what you create", because nobody can. Where does your contribution begin, and end? Where does the contribution of your parents, your neighbors, your friends, your society begin, and end? To what extent did you create anything, or was it just a remix? Is everything a remix? Who are you? You have a unified, continuous sense of self, but most contemporary psychology finds it fairly easy to take people through processes that break this down (as do a number of psychedelics).

We don't need simplistic randian objectivism - it fails to describe the nuance, the beauty, the depth, the wonder, the complexity and the truth of reality.

If it wouldn't exist without your efforts, then you created it. There's no mystery to it. People freely willing to pay for it with their own money is sufficient evidence.

But if it wouldn't exist without other's people efforts too, then what? And they may be people you don't know. They may be people who are dead.

"paying with their own money" ... ack, not this simplistic nonsense again. People temporarily gain control over some measure of various economic resources. It's not their own money, beyond some temporary mutual agreement. Tomorrow, it may not be.

Also, people pay for things regardless of the creator or the morality of its creation. Their willingness to pay for something speaks to their relationship with the thing, not that of the thing's nominal "creator".

You’re mixing different levels of abstraction and equivocating across them.

Sure, no human could produce anything modern on their own, without knowledge, training, support, materials, products, labor, etc. that comes from others. A child raised by wolves will never launch a new line of tennis shoes.

At the same time, no complex effort comes to be without someone’s motivation and effort to take the risk, coordinate the activity and see it through. It doesn’t have to be one primary person to do so, but it certainly can be. It is not difficult to look at the history of a given project and conclude who most acutely put it into motion. The choice to incentivize this acute influence has trade-offs, but many different societies across history have tried many variations of what / where to incentivize. Abstracted, that’s one of the main points being discussed here.

That doesn’t mean all stories about who started / created / produced something are told accurately. But to throw your hands up and say “everything comes from everyone” is completely useless when designing society with the goal of solving problems, providing for its members and improving the human condition.

I didn't say "everything comes from everyone".

I said "nothing comes one person".

Ergo, there is no "what you create", at least in the sense of being able to point at something and say "I did that, it is my creation".

Sure, we may use this a shorthand for situations where the proximal effort came from one person. But it's just a shorthand, and should not obscure the deeper truth.

I'm not discussing the general thrust of TFA or the overall comment thread, just another randian and their simplistic ideas about how the world works.

Ok make me a pb n j and go on about how you didn't make that sandwich, God did

That's what you sound like. Different kind of religion.

Oh knock it off.

By your logic you can’t even define what a definition is so your whole schtick goes poof.

Bad unfalsifiable philosophy like this is why people hate philosophy. You’re just deliberately confusing people and trying to make yourself seem clever by sucking people into this silly definitions game.

This sounds like you're in favor of giving weight to religious arguments in economics. But I doubt that you'd agree with that idea. The fact is that some things cannot be determined with sufficient precision and inclination to be dismissive of this fact creates its own problems.

Please give examples!

Ok no examples _needed_ but please provide some.

I made software that helps my clients. I sell it for $1000/mo. I get $1000/mo and pay taxes on it. I have created $1000/mo.

Please explain what's not fair about this? The intricate nuance I'm missing? LOL

Let's say I work with one other person and pay them $1/hr, which they accept. They make my idea. I end up paying them like 100 and I make 1000/mo forever

Where's the nuance there?

1. you didn't create $1000/mo. You did something that caused the (temporary) transfer of control over $1000/mo of economic resources into your hands. That means that what you did was not judged as useless by everyone else in the society where you live - and that's good!

But the value of your software is utterly contingent on the full context of where you live. As many have noted, there are many highly paid jobs in (say) the USA that would simply have no value if you attempted to perform them in, say, Sudan (especially right now). So that $1000/mo is predicated on the work that others have done to create a context where your work actually has some value. Take that context away (or destroy it), and your work is close to worthless. So, where does the value in your work actually come from? No doubt some comes from you ... but how much is a lot harder to define.

2. I never said anything about fair.

3. I have no idea what your $1/hr example is intended to demonstrate.

1. What caused the transfer? If not value creation, why was it worth transferring? LOL

2. Ok, so capitalism is fair, then? you get paid what you're worth and control that value privately ... uhh...?

3. Explain the nuance of ownership there, what am I missing that makes it unfair?

> more land

So does S. America, which has never been prosperous.

* * *

The Japanese directly intervened in their manufacturing companies, and shaped their economy via the Bank of Japan to "rebuild" and grow their economy. They also have a notoriously closed (to outsiders) economy.

Not to mention the crucial land reform project targeting landlords:

> The government forced absentee landlords to sell all their land to the government. Farmers were allowed to own a small amount of farm land that they could rent out to others ( 2.5 acres or one hectare in most parts of Japan, and 10 acres or 4 hectares in Hokkaido), and had to sell any excess to the government. The government then sold this land, usually to the tenant who had been farming it. The result greatly improved the living conditions of farmers.

http://www.crosscurrents.hawaii.edu/content.aspx?lang=eng&si...

Given the political climate in the US — with accusations of socialism flying left and right — it is fascinating that they were able to conceive and execute literal redistribution of farmland and that is has been held up as a exemplary example of successful reforms. Perhaps there is more to the story, punishing the social class/monied interests that prosecuted the war?

There was considerable appetite for socialism immediately after the war, and the US officials of the early occupation were notably progressive (New Dealers, basically). As US-Soviet relations soured over the next 5 years, a lot of reforms were walked back or discarded, but some were obviously irreversible.

Japan's prosperity did not stem from agriculture.

Cuba's economy is closed to outsiders. Didn't make them prosperous. They have a state run bank, too. Didn't make them prosperous.

Whilst your comparison is problematic on the grounds that Cuba suffered from decades of economic sanctions, it still manages to do better than similar nearby economies, Haiti, Jamaica, etc.

The point I was making was that the person I was replying to was claiming that Japan's economic prosperity was due to it have a "free market" which it does not (unless you count socialism for the companies as "freedom").

One other thing that should be noted about the Japanese "miracle" is the fact that, at a crucial point in time, their manufacturing got a huge cash shot from the USA, due to a need for vehicles for the Korean War.

The USA has given huge cash shots to many countries, and no miracle resulted. Afghanistan, for a recent example. All that foreign aid money, which does not produce any visible results.

All that money probably had very visible results in places like Dubai?

> suffered from decades of economic sanctions

Protecting an economy is the same thing as economic sanctions. You can't claim that one results in prosperity while the other explains economic malaise.

> which it does not

It certainly does. It wasn't a perfect free market, though, as nothing human is perfect. But it was close enough to do the job.

BTW, I wrote that it was a free market.

>> suffered from decades of economic sanctions > Protecting an economy is the same thing as economic sanctions. You can't claim that one results in prosperity while the other explains economic malaise.

Uh, no.

Hard no.

> BTW, I wrote that it was a free market.

Yes, I realised it after I posted, but did not care to update what other people can see for themselves.

Embargo - hitting the other guy's foot with a hammer

Protectionism - hitting your own foot with a hammer

Brexit - swinging at your foot with a hammer and hitting your head.

How do you understand US subsidies on EV, only applying to US manufacturers?

Japan doesn’t have a nearby superpower that makes sabotaging your entire economy a yearly campaign point in order to prove your country sucks. Cuba’s had that for well over half a century.

The US was very helpful in protecting Cuba from the competition from the US economy.

Somehow, that didn't work out for Cuba.

Probably because every powerful economy of the past 6 centuries got there due to strong trade, which the US has gone out of its way to prevent Cuba from doing.

No country with a strong economy got there by being forcibly isolated from the world.

And yet the same people say that protectionism is good for the economy.

But protectionism is often good and necessary for a country's economy. If country A cannot produce a good x, then another country B can stifle A's technology growth for producing x by selling x outright at a cost A can not produce the good at (yet). If you ban the import/restrict of x from country B, you will have to pay some fixed costs to get the production of x up to speed; but you will end up with cheaper unit costs in the end. The catch is, you can not ban all imports outright because importing the technology to produce x will probably save you years on R&D and related costs. Like everything in economics, doing things are good and bad at the same time.

Protectionism takes many form and is controlled by the country doing it.

For instance subsidies for US EV véhicules in 2023 is protectionism and will probably benefit US company.

The US do that a lot for a free market proponent.

As opposed to sanction where it’s something that is imposed to you.

You mean sanctions?

That's what sanctions are. Protecting another country from your economy.

Cuba can’t control those sanctions. Protectionism imply that it’s a choice to bootstrap a sector.

For instance : Biden subsidies on EV véhicules apply to US companies only. That’s protectionism.

EU subsidies for EV works with any brands. So the subsidies money are currently going to Chinese EV manufacturers.

Cuba is in a unique position to be a ridiculously wealthy country. They can flaunt US long-arm jurisdiction (ie: FATCA) and act as a safe heaven for US/EU monies. The embargo on Cuba is pretty much self-imposed by the their current regime.

Yeah, being a criminal safe haven right next to a country that has no problem supporting terrorists and dropping bombs on civilian targets is a wonderful idea. Can’t imagine why they never tried it.

Communism doesn't have a great economic track record.

That kind of depends, the Asian countries that are communist seem to have struck a balance between capitalism and communism that suits them (China, Vietnam)

The DPRK seems to be a basket case, with regular crop failures (we are told), but its relationship with China ensures that it continues to survive.

Capitalism in countries like the USA seems to work for part of their population, but not all, there are large swathes of poverty and homelessness, and the disparity between the haves and have nots is enormous.

The whole point of an economic system, whether it be Capitalism, Socialism, or the more common middle ground (almost every country has struck a balance between the two, with Welfare states, public housing, public health, etc), is to ensure that resources are managed such that they provide for the population.

Capitalism is great at a micro level, people get to decide for themselves how to spend their time, what they want to eat/drink/wear/grow on their farms, and so forth.

But, it's absolutely horrendous at a state/macro level - can you imagine roading being multiple companies competing by putting half a dozen roads between yourself and your work? Emergency services have tried that model (Fire engines used to be owned by one insurance company, or another, and you would have a label on your home letting the crews know which insurance company you were insured by, so if the wrong fire crew showed up they would just watch as your home burnt down)

It's super easy to say "Capitalism has incentivised innovation" but the Soviets were ahead of the USA in several engineering fields, without capitalism (their incentive was competition with the USA)

Yeah. It's everything state owned that doesn't work very well eg. China in the 60s. But some stuff state owned, some free enterprise can work well eg. China in the 2000s. Or most of the west.

Curiously some of the problems that state ownership has also show up in capitalism - corporations that centralise decision making lose the ability to make fine grained, optimal local condition decisions.

And bureaucracy becomes a major headache.

A very common refrain at the moment is businesses wanting to be "nimble like start ups" but are unable to do so due to a myriad of reasons.

Japan is a relatively populous single market with a single language -- about 125 million people at present. It's smaller than the USA, at about 332 million; but almost 60% larger than the most populous Western European country, Germany.

Your data are wrong.

Germany is home to approximately 83 million people. Japan 126 million. Japan is 40% bigger than Germany, not 60%.

US is roughly 334 million. Europe is rougly 748 million, of which the EU is roughly 447 million.

What data is wrong?

Germany is the most populous Western European country. The figures that you quote for the EU have nothing do with the comparison we're making in this thread.

I don't see how the figure for a percentage that you're quoting is compelling in any way:

126 / 1.6 = 78.75

126 / 1.4 = 90

1.6 * 83 = 132.8

1.4 * 83 = 116.2

(fact) Market was not free, US imports were taxed for decades and Japanese exports to the US were not effectively subsidizing Japanese economy for political reasons

Nothing is a perfect free market. One can still reap the benefits of free markets without them being perfect.

> So what is the common thread? Free markets.

Not when it comes to Japan.

During the post-war boom era the majority of its largest businesses were conglomerates with a minimal focus on profit and with interlocking ownership structures that prevented accountability to shareholders.

In addition to that a large amount of corporate investment was state-directed by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).

It was an effective system (at least for a time) but not one that can be accurately described as driven by free markets.

This is not as cut and dried as you suggest.

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato...

Cato has a pretty clear pro-market anti-regulation stance so this isn’t a surprising article from them.

Interestingly, among the Asian Tiger economies, their massive growth first unlocked during a period where they were not meaningfully democracies and their governments intervened heavily to pick winners. The proximate success of their economies was export oriented industry, but the industries and the companies within them were more or less hand picked by the ruling regimes.

The remarkable thing is that Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have all successfully turned the corner to being functioning democracies that are still driving economic growth rather than devolving into corrupt dictatorships.

And of course the biggest (in scale) economic success story of our time is China the last couple decades - which is not a democracy at all as well as having massive government intervention and ownership.

China was an economic backwater until they implemented free markets. The Chinese miracle is probably the biggest and most obvious example of how important free markets are to growth.

Not just free market, and not completely free markets (there’s a lot of government regulation, intervention and ownership). More specifically they followed Singapore’s model.

Tell me how Singapore is a democracy ?

They have elections and the government follows the wishes of the people to some extent even if it doesn't change over much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy_in_Si...

While I agree with you that free markets are a very powerful benefit to any state, you're biased in favor of it being the driver of America's success. America has access to both oceans, which means maritime access to the entire world without being able to be blockaded along the way easily. This is asymmetrical, it doesn't necessarily confer advantage the other way around. It has an absolutely massive population, and unimaginable amounts of diverse resources. These alone make for a very powerful state, no matter what system you have. Now add in that it's populace has more small armaments than every other armed forces in the world combined (including it's own), and the free markets, you get a pretty unbeatable recipe, unless theres another continent nobody knows about lurking around the corner waiting to be discovered.

"America has access to both oceans, which means maritime access to the entire world without being able to be blockaded along the way easily. This is asymmetrical, it doesn't necessarily confer advantage the other way around. It has an absolutely massive population, and unimaginable amounts of diverse resources."

If those matter so much, Mexico should be much stronger than it is. Unblockable access to two oceans, big population, reasonable amount of resources.

What is lacking is rule of law...

Well, yes, but that explains other phenomena that lead to this. Mexico has had a lot of state blunders in the past 150 years that have led to it being behind the US, and the US got there first. Once someone gets there, they necessarily have to try to prevent someone else from doing so. Mexico could've, but they made a lot of mistakes along the way that set them behind. Lawlessness is a symptom of these blunders.

It's hard to know who's best when you don't play fair

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...

Is the US somehow unique in history for this?

If the US is simply better at it, isn't that relevant?

It's not like other (former) superpowers didn't do the exact same things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_involvement_in_regime_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Third_World_relations

Touché. I suppose inwardly focused benevolent systems wouldn't spread because they wouldn't want overthrow other systems

Can a benevolent system be inwardly focused? How benevolent is it to ignore your neighbor?

If we say that it's not a pretend virtue to care about democracy and freedom around the world, then wouldn't it would be a reasonable imperative to interact with the world?