Seattle Raise Minimum Wage to $15; Plutocrats Pull Their Hair Out That Consumers Will Have More Purchasing Power In Northwest Washington State

Seattle becomes the nation's leader in minimum wage Monday when they set the minimum wage to $15 (incrementally increased over next three years) nearly doubling the the Federal minimum wage and increasing the state minimum of $9.36, which is a 60% increase for the lowest paid workers. Small business employers such as Subway franchisee David Jones complain that he would have increase prices of his sandwiches by a dollar, nearly a 20% price increase; the implication being that his workers getting a 60% increase will require him to raise prices 20% to maintain his profit margin. Seattle's Clarion hotel claims that this will ensure rates will increase 10% to avoid large number of layoffs but instead only minor layoffs will occur; the implication being that they would have immediately hire far more than they actually need if they could pay the employees wages below what could sustain a subsistence living standard. The criticism of pushing local minimum wage has largely been based upon harming employment levels, but that ignores all economic analysis since Card & Kruger that in 1992 overturned the conventional wisdom that mandatory increase in labor costs would have a negative effect and shed jobs due to the increase of costs. Why that conventional wisdom seems intuitive, but does not bare itself out in reality, is that it assumes the perspective of the employer as the central decision maker in a local economy when in reality the aggregate of the consumers/employees has a larger effect on demand than the parochial concerns of the overly vaunted entrepreneur.

Even the uber-individualists of Reason.com, fail to include the employee's individual choice to demand higher wages as a liberty that should be respected. Only those that have already shown themselves to be the select elected, as in the theological Calvinist use of the term, can have their liberty defended by the libertarians while those not elected by not being graced by the invisible hand of the market should suffer with their station in life without complaint nor question. The employer can't bear to see a top marginal tax rate anywhere near the Laffer Curve, but the lowly minimum wage worker should not demand his/her fair cut for being industrious through his/her labor? That paradox that those who already have money beyond what they could reasonably spend in a lifetime would somehow have no further incentive if they were to minimize even an iota of luxurious living, but those that are barely getting by can have no financial cushion or they would no longer be incentivized to work (ignoring the incentive of continuation of said employment slightly above a subsistence wage).

Here is a hypothetical to exemplify this economic argument: if we were to have three individuals with different incomes a hedge fund manager with income of $100 million per annum, a insurance claims adjuster earning $50,000 per annum and a fast food worker getting paid $20,000 per annum (assuming Washington state minimum wage of $9.36/hour 40 hours a week, 52 weeks allowing for $600 worth of overtime pay). If we then were to increase the income of all our hypothetical earners by 60% of their income, would their economic activity differ and would that economic activity be beneficial to the rest of the economy? The minimum wage worker going from $20,000 to $32,000 can now put away savings for the inevitable rainy day AND viably climb into the middle-class becoming a more active consumer purchasing more products and services including local businesses such as restaurants. The insurance claims adjuster going from $50,000 to $80,000 can now purchase a newer car from the local dealer more often, go on family vacation (though economic benefits are transferred to wherever they travel, it would be reciprocal were the increase be nationally implemented rather than locally), and the additional funds would also allow the employee to be a little more risk-tolerant and possibly begin to invest along with a slight increase to his/her savings for retirement. Then we have the hedge fund manager earning a $100 million a year, having nearly unlimited purchasing power so increasing income would have no noticeable effect on personal consumer choices, leaving the only effect to what investment the multi-millionaire makes. If the hedge fund manager decided to start a labor intensive enterprise that required (at least down the road after it grew) a large number of employees that would beneficial to the greater part of the economy, but the return-on-investments (ROI) on such ventures are notoriously low which is why the financial industry has been growing as regulations and taxes on investments have evaporated over the last 30 years ensuring the high ROI with the least depency on labor. With the hypothetical income increases for anyone that are already keenly aware of their own economic limitations, any increase will almost entirely go to more consumption creating a demand in the consumer market while having a multiplier effect across the masses whose financial status has improved; conversely those that have nearly limitless purchasing power will not change their economic activity in any way that will increase demand in the economy and very likely would not increase employment in any way.

To argue that if the employer was free to hire the lowest possible wages while also free to set the highest possible prices to attain the most profit is not to the betterment of even those employers in the long term, as the employees getting squeezed on both ends will be resentful of those financially comfortable while they struggle. The counter argument would be that the masses of consumers given a greater purchasing power will cause more money chasing the same amount of product and service, though inflationary, benefits all working members of the economy and encourages consumption while rewarding income from work over passive income from investments which in the near term is the optimum scenario for our economy.

Those that despise the minimum wage has little to do benefitting the many, rather it has to do with that it doesn't exclusively benefit the few preordained economic victors. This can be seen in the plutocratic perspective that cheer for the immediate benefits of tax cuts for the wealthy, and their finger wagging towards immediately benefitting the lowest paid employees. Representative democracy exerting the will of the vast majority, those that are (or have in the recent past) getting paid at or near the minimum wage are seen as far too selfish which is the exclusive domain of those that have become accustomed to economic and political domination that claim their own selfish is a virtue and a vice for everyone else. Thanks alot Dagny Taggert!


http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jun/03/seattle-council-approves-15-minimum-wage/

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/03/seattle-prepares-for-robot-revolution-by

BitCoin: Mercantilism's Rebirth For The 21st Century

Free market economy depends on re-investing profit and dividends back into capital costs of new or continuing enterprises, and with the departure of mercantilism and gold, silver or other mineral backed currency. Mercantilism was the norm of the dominant economies of Western Europe from 1500's till the around the First World War which is the beginning of use of fiat currency that allows nation-states to print paper currency and set the value or manipulate the value of currency  while managing inflation through monetary policy independent of the value of rare metals that was central to national economies prior. Why mention these archaic economic terms in relation to 5 year old cryptocurrency, BitCoin? Because BitCoin proselytizers often cite the alternative currency as benefitting the economy by assuring the that no nation or corporation or regulatory body could increase the money supply because it relies on peer-to-peer network and is limited by math of cryptography, so BitCoin currency is incapable of inflation inducing monetary or any monetary policy since it is regulated by the algorithm in an open source network that can be audited, checked, and double-checked by those that are coders; the end results is that removing inflation (at least monetary policy created via inflation) from our economy incentivizes accumulation of currency and removes the disincentive of being inflation-ed-out of wealth and encouraging that wealth back into the market to chase the greatest return on investment. BitCoin, like the absolutist monarchs at the height of mercantilism, seeking out the greatest accumulation of currency rather than the best and most efficient use of limited resources. I will acknowledge that our current monetary system is overly reliant on state involvement and subject to corruption, as well as intrinsically tied to infinite growth within a world with limited resources-- so it is obvious that there needs to be reforms, it is just that BitCoin isn't anything new or something that humanity has not already tried.

So last week's announcement by Circle to offer BitCoin exchange and banking services sans fees for withdrawing or depositing BitCoins as every other BitCoin exchange does as a means to turn a profit should not be considered as anything other than warmed over the common practice of the 18th century of mints of the European monarchs that provided the service of coinage free of charge to ensure that the gold and silver would be minted and accumulated within their borders. Though the concept of competition between the BitCoin exchanges mirror the competition between the egos of the monarchs is an inelegant analogy, they both share a truth that the economic purpose of these currencies are devoid of benefitting the real economy. Mercantilism encouraged an excessive amount of resources to be deployed to conquer and maintain global colonies without providing direct benefit to the mother country other than bragging rights; BitCoin is able to remove state-induced inflation but does not improve purchasing power of the individuals whom use the currency but actually could cause a downward pressure on the income of labor and stagnate the economy as it benefits savings far greater than our current economic paradigm. The motivating factor to promoting this new mercantilism is that if you have inherited wealth and little income from wages from a job, then there is all the incentive in the world for you to return to mercantilism and stop the slow slide of inflation that may force the wealthy to be entrepreneurial like their ancestors or (G-d forbid it) seek out employment like the vast majority of the economy.

Trading gold bullion, a favorite hobby of those believing doomsday is coming and those that identify themselves as "real 'Mericans", assume that since gold is tradable and currently has high value compared to inflationary fiat currencies then when 's##t hits the fan' they will be all ready to barter and continue participating in the economy as a post-apocalyptical consumers; what they fail to realize is that if 's##t hits the fan' day ever comes then only resources that are essential to life will have any value and gold and doubly so crypto currencies will be valueless. These doomsday preppers and survivalists make up the vocal minority of those calling to get rid of fiat currency, but their voices are amplified by those with accumulated fortunes who seek to retain those fortunes for their progeny without lifting a finger-- in essence a return to Gilded Age where labor was cheap and the uber-wealthy were like living gods. Powerful and wealthy individuals express these latent desires by hiring a small conclave of private investigators to tail Eliot Spitzer because Spitzer rattled Wall Street's cage as Ken Langone did, or compare the trials and tribulations of the most comfortable and wealthiest in world history to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany as Tom Perkins did, or prophesied that gold would reach $5,000 an ounce (when it actually took a drubbing to below $1,000) and that their are some people that deserve to be paid $2 hour such as those with mental disabilities as expressed by Peter Schiff, or to mint his own silver coinage with his face on them like David Koch did in his failed campaign for Vice President on the Libertarian ticket. The fact that the survivalists have bought into the malarkey that the uber-wealthy have sold them as viable economic and public policy demonstrates exactly how duplicitous the new mercantilists are. If the argument is being made that due to rampant government spending that devalues the American dollar will lead to a collapse, but that can be avoided if we end deficit spending and stop taxing the uber wealthy while only tax wages from employment (thereby taxing only the income the uber-wealthy avoid), while the same argument states even if they are unsuccessful the gold coins being sold to them by hucksters like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones will still hold their value even after the collapse is detached from reality and wholly wrongheaded. But this shell game does have the benefit that having a critical mass of duped voters that can show up to rallies demanding to give tax breaks to those that couldn't use it except to become morbidly wealthy, cut government services that are essential to themselves ("Get rid of social security-- because private charity will take care of me when I'm old!"), and stop regulators from enforcing environmental and financial laws because they like reading by the light of the burning cuyahoga river and swindled out of their homes by auto-penned eviction notices. A crowd of old white people is 'great optics' for the elected officials that have already been bought and paid for by those that want to see greater economic disparity even if that is delivered in means made verboten by both Ayn Rand Objectivists and Austrian School of Economics.

We could have an income ceiling that would still exorbitantly high allowing a very luxurious living, but not so high that any individual could jerry rig the economy and the government in their favor, it would essential to include all types of income for all legal individuals to be treated the same (until the Supreme Court changes their opinion would be inclusive to corporations and other fictitious legal entities)-- say $30 million a year. Those that currently earn more than that a year wouldn't be de-incentivized as they would basically be 'Brewster Millions' every year, and whatever opportunities they gave up beyond that income cap would certainly be picked up by someone that hadn't made hit the income ceiling yet spreading the wealth while retaining some aspect of economic meritocracy.

But this is of course a non-starter, for the individuals that currently earn a billion dollars a year or more make up the 700 individuals that hit contribution limits in the 2012 Federal elections, which have been removed with the SCOTUS McCutcheon decision and that along with the disembowelling of the McCain-Feingold legislation allowed dark money into our elections have certainly transformed our democratic implements in November into vestigial afterthoughts of the auctions that occurred long before the ballots for the primaries were even printed.



So lets all get ready to make the heady decision, shall we be crucified by gold or BitCoin?

Return To Gilded Age, Sans Employing The Masses

Company scrip, company stores, and a unfettered markets was at it's height the first third of the 20th century. End result of the excessive wealth disparity was the Great Depression, had the free market solved itself there would have been no need for government intervention, and modern day Libertarians, Objectivists, and Free-marketeers would have been proven right. Popularity of Keyesian economics the world over is based on the outcomes that it has provided. Free-marketeers argue that the invisible hand will set the economy straight for the most part without any government intervention and that their ideology is the most persuasive. Then why was the New Deal so popular? Why aren't the same people that complain about the faceless Big Government not also giving the same weight of opposition to the faceless Big Business that has tendency to over reach and create harm en mass?

Whether Union Carbide's Bhopal disaster, BP's Deep Horizon off-shore rig and Texas City refinery, Massey Energy's Upper Big Ranch Mine explosion, or Freedom Industries chemical spill the first full of this year, modern economy has placed the individual low on the priority when decisions are made by the grand decision makers who have successfully extricated themselves from resulting effects of those decisions. But the answer from the corporate shills and deluded libertarians/objectivists is always "that only if the government got out of the way, it would all resolve itself." So to be honest with ourselves we would have review history that brought about a muscular interventionist government, that initially was effective but ever since the Powell Memo has only been lip service from the establishment left and derided outright by the establishment right.

United Fruit's Santa Marta Banana Massacre, Rockefeller's Ludlow Massacre, Triangle Shirt Waist Factory, the Johnstown Flood and a countless other tragedies show that unfettered capitalism lead to excesses that concentrate resources at the expense of the masses. Free market (at least the Ayn Rand and Mises interpretation of it) is almost completely incompatible with human contentment for the vast majority of the population and proponents assume to be the economic victors through some innate worthiness while the opponents to  deifying 'the invisible hand' are viewed by Free-marketeers as simply trying to cheat some perceived natural order of 'takers' being eliminated to make way for the 'makers.' I apologize to over generalize the Free-marketeers' perspective, but either they hold the opinion of being the economic victors or they are sadists believing they will be the victims under their own proposed economic rubric. In the unrealistic belief that Free-marketeers were to believe that there would be some Utopia if the government were to allow profit motive run free without concern for outcomes, and that they there would be a win-win results for participants within the economy; again I would have to point out that criticism of Big Business would be necessary and yet not forthcoming from Free-marketeers. A perfect free market would require, universal access to perfect information so that each particpant would have opportunity to make fully informed rational decisions whether hiring an employee and knowing exact work output at previous employment or school or consumer to know exactly the profit margin when comparing competing products or services to judge which is the best value. This would eliminate privacy for every individual (both homo sapien and  incorporated varieties), there would be universal access to information and transparency. No business would be allowed proprietary information or company secrets; no boss would be free from informed criticism from his/her employees regarding ability to compensate; no barrier to enter market just because there is a lack of contact information to an existing client base and what they are paying their current vendors.

What Free-marketeers actually call for is a stacked deck in favor of the few economic victors, putting the masses of consumers/citizens at the lowest end of priorities. Equality of the market only exists respectively to the size of one's bank accounts. We could trade in the stability that interventionist government provides, but the economic victors and the shot-callers won't allow their own stability and station in life to be at risk. And the deluded Libertarians/Objectivists constantly barking at the public officials that are to blame for all the world's ills never cricitize the real decision makers, the people that fund elected officials campaigns and hire the regulators when they eventually leave the public sector. But those deluded provide a distraction and a false intelectual riguer to rationalize a new Gilded Age, and a Divine Right of Corporate Kings.

What would a Libertarian/private market's response to Cleveland's House of Horrors be?

As certainly anyone with a beating heart in their chest, there is nothing but disgust and anger towards the evil Ariel Castro who kept three girls for ten years in his basement after snatching them up off the street. Two of the three victims (Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus) being returned to their families and justice will mete out to Castro, a scenario that even the most libertarian acolyte can admit still within the assumed role for government, but what of the third victim that had already been estranged from her family before being kidnapped? Libertarians not wanting the government to provide social workers to Michelle Knight, whom has no means to adjust after surviving such a tragic ordeal nor any support mechanisms since the her family (mother Barbara Knight was in an abusive relationship that endangered Michelle Knight's son) was the cause to her losing her child to the Child Welfare Services, would likely depend on charity to delivery such charity in a world with a negligible level of government service. In a high profile case such as Michelle Knight, there would be charities that would step up, but on the out of the spotlight tragedies such as Michelle's son being abused by Barbara's live-in boyfriend there is not enough charitable infrastructure to supply services to all of the victims of abuse on a daily basis.

In the Libertarian fantasy world, businesses unencumbered by any regulations and government interventions will rise and fall as new competitors creating market pressures on providing profitable services and products to the beck and call of consumers. Monopolies would be held at bay by individuals starting new firms all the time and magically having access to markets through hard work and gumption. But what is to be done to the victims of their circumstances, or victims of crime? Government would continue to dole out punishment to the perpetrators while the victims would just need to suck-it-up and get back to their job or start that Goliath succumbing start-up. Adjusting to life after suffer tragedy, someone out there could offer up for profit service, so that would be available if you could afford it, otherwise you would be out of luck. Who's responsibility for the injustices in the world, who is to make the effort to make things right? Only if you can afford to pay for justice and you consumer that is of a large enough market with dispensable income would you get assistance. Victims of violent crime, being an market that was serviced by a vibrant market of for-profit social workers would have an incentive to create more victims to continue their enterprise. World peace will never be provided when military contractors depend on continued war to profit; violence will always be with us as long as there is systemic incentives to continue servicing the aftermath of violence or selling implements of violence as products; poverty and starvation will end when it is no longer common place to privatize profits while socializing individual risk and liabilities on the least powerful of our society.

There is no market-driven solutions that prevents domestic abuse or child abuse, and dependency on charity to deliver such services when no social safety net is available is fraught with danger. Involuntary taxes paid to provide services, such as social workers to victims of their circumstances, regardless of the end user's ability to pay creates the possibility that a solution can be reached. A solution being reached is often the ideal for government solution (ex. a bridge is built), while a for-profit's ideal is never ending (ex. ferry service across a river); the ideal for the government is rarely met but it is better than the private market's ideal that is to turn the masses into Sisyphus eternally pushing the stone of profits up the hill every fiscal quarter. Though our social safety is the worse solution, it still is far better than all the other solutions.

Profit Motive: Enemy Of Liberty

The profit motive has been restrictive of human freedom, as more and more of day-to-day activity for most of the global population has been determined or affected by profit motive the less choices are made available to the individual. The "free" enterprise and the corporate paradigm seeks out the the most profitable activity available regardless of outcome and ill effects. Losses that can't be entered into ledgers are referred to as externalities, so if there's a buck to be made to pollute, exploit individuals, corrupt decisions, or prostitute morality-- a buck will be made. If a problem can be solved wholly with less profit or continuing  the problem at a lower grade but with sizable return on an investment; the results will most certainly be whatever is the most profitable. The range decisions that can be made available to the individual shrinks with the possibility of the choices having a profit. If there is no profit in an individual's choice, that choice unsurprisingly becomes unavailable. For example, there will always be more profit in scarcity rather than abundance, so in the case of the food supply there is enough arable land in the U.S. alone to feed the world several times over but due to the profit motive it will always more profitable to keep starving a certain segment of the world's population. If the market decides between scarcity or abundance, the choice will always be scarcity for with abundance comes out goes the profit.

Potable water is the most abundant and necessary resource on the planet (with possible breathable air being the only thing of greater abundance). So with it being so abundant there certainly couldn't be a profit motive to potable water, right? Except again and again throughout the world private companies like Bechtel attempt to corner the market on resources create scarcity. Cochabamba is the 3rd largest city of Bolivia, and through under handed dealings of the IMF and World Bank the Bolivian government was forced to privatized their water systems as a condition of continued financing of their national debt. Bechtel, as the primary benefactor of the previous Bolivian development projects, was in the envious position to own the water company and set the prices for water that the people of Cochabamba needed to live. If the profit motive is really the best means to the most efficient process of bringing services and goods to market, why would the cost quadruple over night for Cochabamba's residents when Bechtel entered the market? It's because profit motive is the means to find more profit not efficiency nor solutions. But "free" marketeers (or more aptly named privateers) could never acknowledge failings in the unconditional love of higher rates of return.

The profit motive detrimentally even when in the guise of providing abundance, genetically modified organisms  (GMO) from the labs are pest repellent and more tolerant of adverse growing environments, certainly the more food grown in more places can't be bad? And so the agra-businesses reinvest their profits to provide higher yielding seeds, the manufactured scarcity comes from the fact the seeds have been neutered and do not yield next season's crop. Even if they did have cross pollination of GMO crops and non-patented natural crops, the manufacturers of the GMO seeds go after farmers for intellectual property infringement because they hold the patents on the living flora they created in a lab!

But you say to yourself that you are not a farmer, and the price of your water isn't exponentially rising in price (yet), all of these happy and profitable corporations are so eager to provide me with cheap disposable products, and what does it all have to do with liberty? With the array of solutions to any problem have is cleaved to let the only the profitable solutions remain, it limits the available choices to the individual. It is akin to telling a child you can have milk out of the red sippy cup or the blue sippy cup, while creating an illusion of "free" choice and individual liberty when in fact the parent makes the decision that the child will be drinking the milk. Within the profit scheme, we provided all the choices that are the most profitable, even if the best choice for us sustainable but not profitable enough. The "free" marketeers (privateers) with claims that mixed economy where both government and for profit enterprise compete in supplying goods and services is some how unfair, that the only citizen/customer "free" choice should be between the red sippy cup and the blue sippy cup that profits them.

The culling of the choices to only those that are for profit, isn't the most nefarious aspect of the profit motive. The most nefarious part of the profit motive is that instead bringing solutions to preexisting problems it's the creation of new problems with ready-to-purchase solutions. Healthcare in America is an animal that was created by committee, one member says it should have horns, another one says it should have wings, and yet another says it should swim-- the end results an abomination that no one person would ever have intentionally created. Any attempt to simplify it, and possibly follow our neighbors to the North with straight forward single payer for-profit healthcare will be lambasted for seeking out a solution that smacks of Socialism (and thereby cuts the profit taking middlemen). As if getting nickeled-and-dimed as one comes to the less healthy side of a lifetime of living is as American as Mom, apple pie, and baseball. Richard Stengal after writing the Time article "The Cost of Care" with conclusions that include decreasing Medicare age of eligibility to save money, since the operating expenses of Medicare is so much lower than that of the private market. The only reason this choice is unavailable to solve America's problem is that the fanatical privateers can't see past the possibility of anything but the profitable solution. So liberty is denied to the citizen that wants to chose the lower costing and less profitable solution. All of the obfuscation that prevents the most freedom to America in regards is the decisions made by committee (all committee members are profit seekers and not solution seekers) but it is a stretch on my part to claim that the healthcare is problem that was created by the profit motive.

For profit prisons and campaign contributions to legislators to propose mandatory minimums are exactly a problem created whole clothe for profit. Non-violent drug criminals choke our prison system, and are carted off to the correctional facilities operated at a profit by the likes of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO group that have no interest in rehabilitation since recidivism is counter-profitable to having their prisons filled. Beginning in the late 70's and early 80's private prisons to turn a profit on the burgeoning war on drugs. But the Federal government's decision to tough on recreational drug use wasn't what allowed for-profit prisons, but the Powell Memorandum that called corporate America to arms in the political debate, along with U.S. Supreme court decisions First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti and Buckley v. Valeo expanding corporate power and influence over elections. This encroachment on human liberty by non-corporeal legal  entities, both blots out choices for the individual person (the breathing type of person not the LLC type) when voting but waters down the humanity that makes up the government initially intended to be of, for, and by the people. And if you are to believe I exaggerate the amoral nature and corrupting affects that the profit motive has then please consider this: two Pennsylvania judges Judge Mark Ciavarella and Judge Michael Conahan were convicted (February 9th, 2009) of defrauding the people of honest services due to the $2.6 million that was provided to the judges by the for-profit juvenile correction center they, as juvenile court judges, were sentencing minor crimes (such as defamation of school principal on a MySpace page and shoplifting) for extraordinary long prison sentences.

So whether the profit motive corrupts the water we drink, food we drink, or air we breath, it will remain an enemy to our life. As long as it is profitable to keep a significant portion of our population in jail, it will remain an enemy to our liberty. As long as it continues to predicate the addiction of consumable goods and false hope that is hyper-materialism, the profit motive will remain an enemy of our pursuit of happiness.




http://web.archive.org/web/20080607071734/http://www.50years.org/cms/ejn/story/85

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/percy-schmeiser.aspx

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136867,00.html

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_National_Bank_of_Boston_v._Bellotti

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

Libertarian Pardox: How the free market will lead to a One World Corporation

Two ideals for most libertarians are in direct conflict with each other. The free market without government intrusion is the ideal economic environment; the sovereignty of the nation-state (specifically the United States sans military adventurism) is supreme and should be without intervention of foreign government or any semblance of  a One World Government.

Free enterprise being motivated purely by profit, and the stock market seeking out perpetual growth to out pace the rest of the market, without outside regulation of government and other disinterested entities monopolies and oligopolies are the  inevitable result. As the corporations grow too large for consumers to counteract monopolistic tendencies for their patronage choices to exert the 'invisible hand' of the market and assert reforms on the these economic Leviathans, competitors will either be acquired by or collude with the biggest enterprises of their particular market. Along with the horizontal monopoly (or effective monopoly among the few colluding competitors) for the sake of efficiency vertical monopolies would be sought out due to profit motives and demands for higher returns on investment. The current trajectory of the economy is veering towards a more globalized one, if this continues while there is an absence of government intervention then there is nothing to prevent a One World Corporation dominating every aspect of economic life.

I can hear my conservative-libertarian friends bellowing "No! That would never happen because the market is self correcting and the government only gets in the way." The profit motive does not have any incentive for either self-restraint nor delaying gratification, so whatever action or transaction that can be profited in this fiscal quarter and avoid liability or risk to the next fiscal quarter if it couldn't be avoided in perpetuity, leaving nothing off limits. But what of the individual moral compass that make the decisions for the corporations, won't they show restraint? With the free market and amplification of person-hood through incorporation accountability and responsibility are diffused beyond any individual.

For example the in the recent economic downturn that had provided incentives to initiate mortgages regardless of the outcome (mortgages brokers), to provide liar-loans (Countrywide Mortgages), securitized risky loans (Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Salmon Brothers), then create markets to be traded (Goldman Sachs, Bank Of America, Citibank, etc), have the securities fraudulently rated providing false sense of stability to the typical investor (S&P, Moodys, Fitch), securitized risky mortgages with intention of losing value (Magnetar Capital), the risky financial transactions all insured to further diffuse accountability (AIG).

How would less regulation have prevented the credit crisis of 2008? How would an unrestricted pursuit of profit been different in the prior five (5) years of the crisis? If the self regulating market was hindered in it's course correction by say, the Federal Reserve, why would the for-profit private banks that ostensibly run the Fed also be the biggest barrier to a self regulating market? Removal of the Federal Reserve as Ron Paul and his acolytes would propose wouldn't be a reasonable cure-all unless one were to ignore economic history prior to 1913 and the raison d'être for the Fed: the Panic of 1907, where the American stock market lost 50% of value within a year. At the time of the Panic there was no means to insert liquidity into the economy so Teddy Roosevelt's had to accept J.P. Morgan's acquisition of Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Rail Company into his already monopolistic U.S. Steel Corporation in order for J.P. Morgan's to infuse liquidity into the market. J.P. Morgan was then given wide latitude when the Federal Reserve was formed and the reason why the Federal Reserve today is remains a tool of the private market rather than answering to people's representatives in the government.

The libertarian movement, in an bizarre attempt to achieve their goals, only target the public sector and do not speak ill of the private sector letting loose the golem that is corporations as if they could do no wrong and would never be destructive to the long term of the economy for short term gains. Of last year's Libertarian Party platform plank 2.6 (curiously named Monopolies and Corporations) concludes that corporations should be freely able to form and regulated by the free market alone, no mention other than the title of monopolies. Without government intervention there is no means to restrain monopolies occurring, and from the libertarian perspective that governing via free market is an inalienable from human freedom then there it should be a universal form of government for the entire planet. How could the free market prevent the monopolies of each country's economy from merging? If the free market is seeking out the most profitable (allegedly the most efficient) means and with the removal of redundancies of multiple competitors the most profitable and the only logical conclusion without government intervention is a one world corporation.

The libertarians fearful of a One World Government with command economy devoid of individual freedom holds up an ideal that would lead to a One World Corporation with an corporate aristocracy that will be the sole source of all employment and consumer products imposing their will without any repercussions other than outright rebellion against the free-market overlords. This has been an argument for moderation and a mixed economy, rather than the extremism that free-marketeers put forward. Extremism on either end and those that are proponents of extreme economic philosophy and ideology should be castigated and shunned at all costs.