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To: AC Flyer who wrote (43598)	12/18/2003 10:06:02 AM
From: glenn_a	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi AC_Flyer. ((a large scale test with multiple controls, of your hypothesis that free markets are not the best way to organize human economic activity. The results of this experiment are clear - that individual and collective wealth correlates with the degree of market freedom in a society with a correlation coefficient approaching 1.)) LOL! Yep, clear to the Hondurans, clear to the Peruvians, clear to the Russians, clear to the Argentines, clear to the Colombians, Mexican, Malays, and Iraqis. Clear to me. ;) BTW, "free markets", and which society has implemented this golden ideal? Certainly not the U.S. and the Europeans. If it hasn't really been implemented, how do you measure correlation efficiencies of a "ficticious" ideal? As a framework for transactional efficiency, a "free market" model makes a lot of sense IMO. As an unregulated system unbalanced by public-service ethic committed to good governance capable of counter-balancing the profit motive, well, welcome gangster capitalism. It's a matter of balance and ethic IMO. JM2C worth. glenn

To: AC Flyer who wrote (43598)	12/18/2003 11:48:53 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 74559

You have a childish grasp of reality. Free trade creates winners and losers. And wouldn't you know it, organizations and treaties created by large multi-national corporations are enriching large corporations at the expense of civil society, disrupted communities, entire classes of people like Mexican corn farmers for example, or water consumers in Cochabamba, Bolivia. And each and every one of us individually who lose the things that make our local communities vibrant and self-sufficient. With the current wretched regime, the corporations win, and the rest of us lose. What is so hard for you to comprehend about that? It really is time that you educate yourself instead of spouting off with inane psychological folderol when the subject is bare-knuckled economic dominance vs. the people. Read something would you: Joseph Stiglitz, "Globalization and it's Discontents" amazon.com And especially you need to wake up to the reality that the only way "free markets" are going to work is in a totally repressive and unfree police state. You are now staring at the future, and it is mighty ugly: Message 19534324 When you need to send 30 undercover cops out from behind police lines to foment a peaceful crowd and then attack it, you know that the Police State is out-of-control and heading your way. I have a friend who was there. She still has nightmares about how ugly this brave new world of "Free Markets" is becoming. Before markets are fully free, societies will be fully enslaved.

To: AC Flyer who wrote (43598)	12/18/2003 7:19:11 PM
From: mcg404	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

<The world is [running a test] that free markets are not the best way to organize human economic activity. The results of this experiment are clear - that individual and collective wealth correlates with the degree of market freedom in a society with a correlation coefficient approaching 1.> I can agree with this statement - except that i'm afraid you are are using 'human economic activity' and 'wealth' as synonyms for 'society' and 'well-being'. I don't have an argument with respect to the efficiency of free markets, so much as the position that they should dominate ever aspect of our lives simply because they are the best at what they do (ie, making allocation decisions for economic activity). Who was it that suggested that the use of GNP as a measure of the well-being of a society was akin to trying to fly a 747 by watching the oil pressure gauge?