Free Markets and Exceptional Wealth

Both the left and right say things about the free market that are not true.  The left says the free-market is "devil-take-the-hindmost" "competition, and the right says the free market is the path to riches.  How come in practice, neither is true?

In places where free markets reign relatively, say Hong Kong, there are two reasons why no one goes for want.  One, anyone and everyone who wants to work, can work.  Help wanted signs are up everywhere, because people start their own businesses given so much opportunity.  Th communist party restricts Chinese from moving to Hong Kong, because everyone would.  So for slackers to say "I can't find a job" would get no sympathy in Hong Kong.  ("Then go to China...")  For those who are truly in trouble, a house burns out, serious domestic violence, often what charities offer is a step up from where victims came, charities are so well funded.  In a free market, where so many people live authentic lives necessary to a free market, with all of its ups and downs, nobody has the nerve to say "no" to someone truly in trouble.  Those the left pretend to care about are better served in a free market.

There are no billionaires who got their fortune from working in the free market.  Bill Gates and Ross Perot computerized the welfare state.  Govt forced pensions paid into the stock market which made Warren Buffett a billionaire, one of his most famous companies is GEICO, a company that runs delightful ads with several pitchmen.  GEICO of course stands for Government Employee Insurance COrporation.  He started with a shirt company, but pensions had to put the money somewhere.  You'll say, "But Buffett was smarter than the rest.."  Are you sure it is not just an example of "survivorship bias?"  True true,  had he not picked the stock biz, on the advice of his congressman father as to where the money would be, he would not have had a chance.  And do you really believe, with his connections, it was chance?

But what does if matter chance or not, without a government requirement and tax coercion, there would not be the funds flowing through stocks that are the basis of his wealth.

Of course, at this point, people will ask, if not exceptional wealth, then what is the point of a free market?  The point of a free market, as in freedom from and freedom to, is competition and division of labor.

Free competition is what keeps anyone from amassing exceptional wealth, short of government intervention.  The left knows exceptional wealth is the result of government intervention in markets, and in essence picking winners and losers, and protecting the winners by statute (not common law), so the left logically wants to tap those "winners" to pay for the left's generosity to selected groups.  In a free market, there is no exceptional wealth because competition is drawn to success, and in essence invited to compete.  In USA we do not allow open competition, so we have these vast disparities as to who gets what portion of an unnaturally limited pie.

And here is what a free market competition does not do:  it does not copy exactly what someone else is doing. In a free market no one would see microsoft's success and open a microsoft clone.  In a free market someone would do microsoft one better, or serve that market microsoft ignores, such as those who desire improved efficiency when using a computer for work, or security when online.  In a free market there would be no reason to try to take microsofts customers away, there would only be people doing microsoft one better or one different, serving people microsoft cannot or will not serve.  This is division of labor, leading to more and better options.  The pie just gets bigger and bigger, assuring a surfeit for any and all participants in the market.  Right now, in usa, anything remotely like anything microsoft does, real or imagined or even just tendentious, leads to a crippling lawsuit.  Chinese are freer under communism than we are in USA under democracy.

So you can see why the left and right hate free markets: the left has no poor to exploit, and the right has no means to amass wealth.  There is only the more better cheaper faster of the constant improvements readily introduced.  Who wants that?

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