Wednesday, August 10, 2011

London Calling

The chaos in London highlights, in flame, the difference between capitalism and free markets.  If the UK were a free market, all of those people would be working, not looting.  In capitalism, power is aggregated by trapping people in usury payments on goods and services, wherein the the principle debt will remain constant, but the value of the asset may drop, trapping the borrower.

Trapped borrowers are unproductive, trapped capital is malinvested and misallocated. The genocidal welfare/warfare state is designed to keep elites in power while reducing the undesirables.  In a free market, gainful self-employment is easy enough, becoming financially elite is difficult.

Yes, people willingly agree to those debts, so they are blameworthy, but it cuts both ways.  We have an inalienable right to be free to slavery, of any sort, so we can neither trap people nor allow ourselves to be trapped.  We have to power to do so, but not the right.

Power, aggregated by the financial industry and allied with government, decides who wins and loses.  In a Free Market, such power cannot be aggregated, for free competition trims every success by inviting innovators to cream off customers with close imitations.  Capitalists call this theft.  Consumers see this as choice, differentiation, division of labor, specialization.  Consumers call it good, and support it with their hard-earned money.

The funny thing is Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony for 200 years, and is one of the top three free markets on planet earth.  Hong Kong will not go up in flames, because of the free market basis the Scotsman who organized Hong Kong established.  Anyone and everyone who desires to work in Hong Kong can and will.

On almost every corner in Hong Kong is a lunch counter, selling just about the same thing.  Except everyone has a slight difference, which attracts its regulars.  Everyone benefits.

Walmart and Carrefour failed in Hong Kong, spectacularly, because in a Free Market, such a business could never succeed.

Hong Kong does have five times the billionaires, per capita, than the United States, but those billionaires are heavy in China-based international biz.



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