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Noam Chomsky: "Free Markets?"

Santarchy2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2014–2020
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talk · general · evergreen · 2014–2020 on HN

A 1997 Noam Chomsky talk at Northeastern University about the gap between free-market rhetoric and practice. He argues that business relies heavily on state intervention, and he discusses trade, NAFTA and labour versus capital mobility.

Linked repeatedly in threads on monopolies, protectionism, and subsidies, usually as a source for the argument that free markets are an ideology more than a reality.

12 comments from Hacker News

@monster992019-08 · in “Amazon wants to control third-party sellers’ product pricing”

I don't believe in the ideologies of the time, call me a doubting thomas that the human race is actually intelligent. I know too much about how human beings and corporations actually function to believe in free market mythology. See here for if you want more acedemic take: ▶ this video There are all sorts of things wrong in reality with how capitalism actually functions. The reality is most people are too irrational and too stupid for any market to function as a "market". The videogame "market" is a perfect example. For the first 20-30 years of PC game history, we were getting good software for a fair price. Then the masses got internet and shit went sideways. AKA people started buying software they didn't own, nor control, giving super powers to corporations to extort them and engage in all sorts of abusive practices and raise prices astronically because the internet now gave them access to people with addictive tendencies and impulse control problems 24/7 and in order to gather the worlds evolutionary unlucky regarding gambling addiction all games now have microtransactions. I watched my hobby be destroyed, my software robbed and my os infested with dishonest code because stupid got internet. Before the internet Microsoft and game companies had no incentive undermine software ownership because it was impossible to do so. The market for videogames today is a market for lemons, a total shit show of broken games, stolen games, etc. Because a rational game buyer would never buy a pi

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@vishnugupta2014-03 · in “Facebook Refused No-Poaching Agreement With Google”

This has been the case with several industries (manufacture, service to name a couple) ever since the capital was globalized beginning from late 80's. The difference is that the collusion is a part of some trade agreement (GATT etc.,) where labor movement between nations is severely restricted or banned altogether and capital movement is encouraged in the name of liberalization! This has resulted in industries being shut down at a massive scale in US where labor costs are higher and moved to a country where labor is cheap (China, India and so on) and also less regulated ("flexible" is the word used). As a bonus companies get to flout just about every environmental regulation which are non-existent in third world countries (think Bangladesh's textile manufacturing plants producing for luxury brands). The net result of this combination of "free capital movement + restricted labor movement" is reduced wages across nations and industries. And over the time you end up having no skilled labor in a company's nation of incorporation (Apple?). The supreme irony I see here is that the advocates of "free market" for capital tend to advance amazingly absurd arguments when it comes to having a similar free market for labor. I highly recommend watching this talk by Noam Chomsky titled "Free Markets?": ▶ this video

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@som332020-06 · in “Four million parts, 30 countries: How an Airbus A380 comes together (2018)”

>It's not governed by economics. Except economics as you are taught it is bullshit, the rich have always taken state subsidies regardless of "economics". ▶ this video

@som332020-06 · in “No Recent Automation Revolution”

>I'm saying that the state can't be trusted to manage the economy Except the state has always managed the economy, you have been lied to, the upper class has never applied its free market principles to itself. ▶ this video Copyright and intellectual property are monopoly rights, aka things that need a state to enforce, they are entirely fictional and are government intervention in the economy.

@som332020-05 · in “Omega-3: Intervention for childhood behavioral problems? (2015)”

I wonder how much self deception exists in western society when the evidence suggests you live in a lawless oligarchy, one example from endless copyright extension. link But first HN, you can be told the facts and the figures and you won't reason to the right conclusion see the science: link Does the upper class and the business community believe in Free markets? ▶ this video IMF subsidies for the rich and their corporations link subsidies So looking at all that free cash from the state, did the upper class really "earn" all that cash or could it be they own the government and can just rubber stamp whatever they like because the average HN poster and person on our planet is illiterate and well indoctrinated?