"Occupy" Superthread

Or you could change your system a bit so you dont have like 7000 people who have actual power in a country of 300 million something people.

ps: some professor calculated the the amount of people that have some form of power over the US (bussiness and political leaders) and came out around 7000.

The Occupy Portland protest fought off the cops.

Change the system, that's what I'm saying. We need to separate government and politics from the economy and corporations.

So total free market?

Thats not changing the system, thats making sure the two elites cant contact eachother anymore (if it works in the first place), the fact that you have two way too small groups of people wielding a disproportionate amount of power isnt changed at all.

Plus as karakoran hinted you cant really separate the economy and politics, because they flow over into eachother.

Why were the cops moving in on the protesters?

Yes. In a total free market, corporations wouldn't always be able to compete with local businesses, thus destroying the "corporations hold all the power" theory. Without the corporations, there would be far less corruption in the government.

Let me give you an example. Walmart is a large corporation with almost unlimited funds compared to the local shopkeeper. They open a shop in a town and lower the price on goods to drive the local shopkeepers to bankruptcy. The shopkeepers in the town are forced to close, and Walmart then raises the price on the goods. It will be a while before any new shops are going to open and in that time Walmart can earn enough money to do this again with a profit. Walmart can furthermore buy large quantaties of goods and thus sell them cheaper.
Awesome right!?!?

I don't understand how a free market would make them less competitive? I thought free markets were supposed to remove regulation and restrictions, making corporations more competitive (so they claim)?

The libertarian response is one of two things: 1) that monopolies cannot arise without government intervention, or 2) that anti-trust laws are acceptable/necessary to keep the free market on track.

That is the exact opposite of what I said.

That is exactly what I said.

Like Kal said, Anti-trust laws are necessary at times, assuming Wal-Mart did become a full monopoly. I also believe that local municipalities should define their own internal monopolies, so that even if Wal-mart has competition around the nation, if they hold a monopoly in a given town, that town could take legal action to break the monopoly in that town, thus encouraging local business over corporate business.

Sorry bro I got the wrong end of the stick. I still can't get my head around what you said below though.

To me this reads: in a free market, corporations couldn't always compete with local businesses. Why not? They're free to compete right? They're free to drive down prices and put other businesses out of business? I'm just really not getting how that quote equals what you said. Maybe you would kindly rephrase it?

Well then I'm sorry but that is not a totally free market like you said you wanted. If you start making regulations and restrictions then the market isn't totally free.

I can see why you think that, maybe I should have rephrased it. Here in America, our economic policy is very protectionist towards big corporations, and not totally free. To me, "regulation" is generally pro-corporations, and "free" is generally pro-local business. And my definition of a "free market" includes anti-monopoly measures(both locally and nationally) and not necessarily economic anarchy.

If we allow corporations to grow uncontrollably then that's not free, now is it?

1. Regulation of the free market can go both ways. In Denmark we use it to protect small business owners etc. and to stop monopolies.
2. Yes. That's what the free market means. A free market means that the government doesn't intervene in the market and that the market will "regulate itself" which is basically bs as we saw with the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis.

Okay.

Alright.

Whoah, whoah, hold up there buddy, the world's economies leading up to 1929 and 2008 were anything but Laissez-Faire. America for one was never laissez-faire.

It certainly was in finance. By the way I understand what you mean now and I agree that Washington is much more pro big business than small business. An example being oil subsidies. An example being they haven't regulated the banks. An example would be that Goldman Sachs was Obama's top donor etc.

Well I knew that final statement was going to provoke a response
Keynesian economics are nowhere near enough to stop economic depressions/downturns. Both crashes were caused by speculation and/or risky(to say the least) banking. Both of these could have been stopped or at least restricted with legislation. I agree that it wasn't laissez-faire(god I hate french words) but that would only have made the recessions worse.

I blatantly disagree.

How come? If you had taxed stock trading it would have reduced speculation.
If you enacted laws that restricted banks from loaning money to a company with a high debt ratio it would have reduced the bailouts.