When is “The Free Market” not just a euphemism for stealing?

I had this question put to me a while ago by Mozglubov and promised that I would blog a response. Here is my, rather late I'm afraid, reply.

Perhaps the best way to reply is to characterize a theoretical, ideal “free market” and then look at where real world examples fall short, or fail completely. In a perfect free market, all concerned parties would have the same amount of pertinent information relating to whatever transaction they were carrying out, and that information would include all the information that would be relevant. Additionally there would be no external coercion or assistance for any involved parties. I might be missing something but I think that's a fairly complete list of what you'd need for an ideal market transaction. It's pretty theoretical though, let's look at a real example. Say you want to buy an apple. You go to the store and you see an apple that you know is of good quality, you see the price is the same as or better than in other locations and you pay cash for it, receiving the exact apple you expected to, it's delicious. That's a fairly trivial example, but it characterizes a reasonably free transaction. There are, of course all sorts of problems and assumptions, even with this example. For instance, who says the price of apples at all the other stores is what you should be paying? Perhaps they've all banded together into some manner of apple cartel, and are artificially inflating the cost of apples. Or maybe the apple only looks to be good quality, the example assumes that you are qualified to judge the apple, for flavor, nutrition, and any other pertinent considerations.

The most common way to create a situation that you can sell as “free”, but is in fact stealing to some extent, is to create some external advantage or disadvantage and impose it on one party. For example, say two grain growing countries are trying to sell their product on the international market. If one country subsidizes their farmers, both directly and indirectly through things like providing roads and railways to transport their product on, who do you think will be able to sell grain for cheaper? Any time there is an imbalance of power or information between parties in a transaction, there is the opportunity for one side to disadvantage the other.

Shared items

I've long espoused the many qualities of google reader, and rss in general. With that in mind may I direct your attention to the sidebar, where items that come into my reader that I found particularly interesting are shared. I apologize for the lack of posts lately, I have a few in mind. In the meantime there's some reading

On Torture

Republican Senator Arlen Specter:

"If there is evidence of criminality, then the Attorney-General has the full authority and should prosecute it," he said yesterday in a statement. "But going after the prior administration sounds like something they do in Latin America in banana republics."

That's because it's usually only in banana republics that the executive branch is so wildly and obviously corrupt that such measures are necessary. We didn't have to indict Paul Martin for violating the Geneva Convention BECAUSE HE DIDN'T. Just like most western leaders. Congratulations Arlen, you've compared GWB to some banana republic dictator, I think the comparison is a lot more apt than you would have hoped.

*EDIT* I should have read the whole piece before making this post, there's more stupidity afoot.

"This idea of looking at the lawyers who gave the legal advice would be a nightmare for America," Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told Fox News. "Who would serve in the future as a lawyer knowing that your legal advice in hindsight could put you in jail?"

Or, who would give legal advice that they knew violated international law if they knew it could put them in jail? Man, that would be just awful eh?

More from the article

Perhaps the people who authorized the program should be held accountable, even if that means charging Mr. Bush and former vice-president Dick Cheney.

But not only would bringing criminal charges against a former president ignite a political firestorm certain to eclipse Watergate, senior Democrats might also have to be arrested because they were among the congressional leaders who were briefed on the program in 2002.

Oh no! You mean we'd have to hold EVERYONE accountable for TORTURING PEOPLE?!?!?!! What kind of rinky dink operation are we running here? No no, an issue like torture you only bring up to attack your political rivals, not because it's TORTURE!

Majority Leader Harry Reid, disagrees.

"I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are," he told reporters. The Democrats must cope with a much more slender majority in the Senate than is the case in the House.

How exactly do you propose to get these facts Mr. Reid? Do you propose they come to you in a dream or something? I know! Why don't we set up a comission! We could get everyone together and task them with finding out what the facts are! Oh, you're right, too soon, let's find out what the facts are before we find out what the facts are.

Holy crap folks, the de facto leader of the free world authorized torture and everyone is acting like we should just leave it alone because it's "divisive". Talk about losing whatever remnants of a moral high ground you had.

Priorities

Sorry about the lack of posts lately, finals and all that you know. Soon enough I should be in a better position to write, although by then the weather will be good and I may not feel like it, I do have a couple posts planned for when things get less crazy. Here's a quick one though.
First, a quote from this article

Should we stay, fighting a potentially un-winnable war, which has already cost the lives of 117 Canadian soldiers, in a pre-Industrial tribal society where the rule of law is not even a concept, let alone a functioning system? And yet, after Rwanda, Ethiopia and Darfur, can we turn away from the suffering of other people?

News flash: Darfur is still going on. Part of the reason we're not in Darfur is that all our military capacity is tied up in the middle east. Saying we have to be in Afghanistan after our failings in Darfur is therefore somewhat disingenuous, as is most wartime coverage I suppose.

Break the cycle

Fly me to the moon

I imagine most people by now have seen this image or something similar with the same slogan. While I understand, and for the most part agree with the sentiment, I do think there's a more accurate way to phrase it. I'd replace both "science" and "religion" with "western imperialism".
While science was certainly the means by which rockets were shot into space, the reason the mission received the funding, research, and overall effort and attention came about because of the cold war. While I'm sure many, if not all of both the Russian and American scientists working on their respective projects were dedicated to science and at least as interested in furthering our understanding of the universe as they were of beating their rivals, the reason the powers that be and society at large supported them was more political.
The situation is similar with 9-11. While the rhetoric used is coloured with religious references, and it's certainly accurate to characterize the perpetrators of the attacks as Islamic fundamentalists or religious fanatics the underlying rationale is secular. Reading Bin Laden's fatwa against America there's a whole lot of praising Allah, speaking of holy war and so on, but the actual grievances have much less to do with our freedoms or being heretics than they do with military bases in the holy land, and western powers fucking over Islamic nations dating back to the Sykes-Picot agreement.
I guess the point behind this is, if you're really an atheist, then to some extent it's silly to blame religion for things. Sure people say they're doing things for their God, in the name of their God, because their God commands it or whatever, but an atheist knows they're really doing it for themselves. Enron employees who committed acts that they might have recognized as immoral were they not surrounded by a culture that condoned it are in a similar position to a religious person practicing a religious right that outsiders would consider abhorrent.

Ear Candy: A Static Lullaby - Toxic

Oh how I fiend for this record, and this song in particular

Protests

I've been to two protests in recent times. The first was for George Warcriminal Bush, on March 17 and the second was a counter protest to an Aryan Guard white pride parade on the 21st.
Bush chose Calgary as his first international speaking forum since his clusterfuck of a presidency and I felt it was important to be there to give him an appropriate welcome. Unfortunately I had a research report due about the time the protest was due to start, so I missed a lot of the festivities. I arrived after the attendees had already been ushered inside, so I didn't get to heckle them at all, and I'm sure almost nobody saw Bush himself. I did get to witness some good chanting, people (including some adorable small children) throwing shoes at a huge print of George's face, a woman dressed as the infamous abu ghraib prisoner standing on a milk carton, and someone with an intense looking shoe cannon dressed as a Guantanamo inmate. There were also a ton of cops, apparently a few people got arrested before I showed up and I can't comment on how they were treated, while I was there the police behaved quite well, except for their failure to arrest the war criminal inside, which is probably a bit much to ask. There were some frustrations of course, the preponderance of 9-11 truthers and other such conspiracy theorists didn't help the legitimacy of the protest in my opinion. There's also the fact that George isn't in any position of power anymore, and even when he was he didn't seem to give a good goddamn about protests, so besides feeling good and being fun the protest probably didn't accomplish a whole lot. Oh well.
The next protest was a lot bigger and a lot more intense. Every year on the UN's international day to end racial discrimination, a racist group called the Aryan Guard organizes a white pride parade. Every year this is opposed by anti-racist protesters and after hearing about the event at the Bush protest I knew I had to attend. The rally (that is the anti racist counter protest) began at 10am in front of city hall. I arrived with my roommate around 11 and the place was already packed, at least 100 people (don't take my numbers too seriously, I'm bad at this) were already gathered with various signs and flags. I had a home made sign with some lyrics from the propagandhi classic “the only good fascist is a very dead fascist”. The event was pretty upbeat when I arrived, lots of people chanting, lots of cars passing by honking in support. There were some cops across the street keeping an eye on things and shooting photos and videos but they were a shadow of the police presence we'd encounter once the Aryan Guard showed up. After some delay, around 2:30 we got word that the Guard had arrived downtown and was beginning their march. People immediately set off in the direction they'd been spotted down Stephen Avenue. Some people set off at a steady march but the majority were closer to a dead run, tearing down the street, flanked by cops and shouting anti racist slogans, I must confess it was quite exhilarating. Tensions escalated significantly when we actually encountered the parade. A whole bunch of bike cops were using themselves and their bikes to form a makeshift barrier between us and the Aryans. I'd received word ahead of times that in past rallies the Aryans had taken pictures of counter protesters and harassed them after so I was sporting a bandanna provided by the anti racists and some sunglasses. The sides started hurling various insults and chants back and forth, along with some projectiles, although overall I must say that the news reports I read on the topic made that aspect seem a lot more extreme than it was.
Every so often for reasons that I couldn't ascertain the guard would move along, flanked by cops on all sides and everyone else would scatter trying to find the quickest route to block them off. Maybe a block or more away we'd cut them off again and the now familiar song and dance of mutual insults and threats would resume. I didn't keep close track of time but I'd say this went on for maybe an hour and a half. Finally I'm told the Aryans got on a bus and went back to their caves, however I was en route to their new location and didn't actually see them leave so I can't comment on whether it was a charter or city bus, there were rumours that the cops had paid for a bus to remove them, I can't comment on the accuracy of those statements. After the guard departed the approximately 300 strong anti racist protesters marched back to city hall chanting “Peace and Love” the whole way, we got a lot of approving nods and thumbs up from bystanders on the way back. There was even a wedding party we walked by and most of the protesters shouted some manner of congratulations on the way by. After we got back to city hall I left so I can't say what all happened after that, I imagine people hung out for a little while and then went home.
Overall I must say the cops did a commendable job in a very tricky situation. They were standing between two groups of very pissed off people and if they hadn't been there I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that there would have been a very serious battle. I don't imagine they liked protecting the guard (our sheer numbers pretty much guaranteed that any fight would have ended badly for the guard, although I suspect that their side was probably more heavily armed and experienced with fighting, our side outnumbered them by at least 10 to 1) particularly the non-white cops. Protesters on our side heckled them pretty mercilessly, telling them to stop protecting racists and urging them to step aside. I read that a total of 3 people have complained about being mistreated by the police since the incident, 2 of ours and one guard member. I think my roommate actually has footage on his phone of one of the incidents happening. The story mentioned a woman being struck in the head and we both saw a rather large cop shove a woman in the head quite hard. We're planning to look into this more and submit the footage as evidence if appropriate.
Finally I'd like to discuss the makeup of the protesters on our side and also what I consider the rationale behind participating. In a democratic society such as ours it's not the role of the police to repress things like white pride parades. Should they turn into hate crimes or something that's another matter of course, but at the point where it's just some very misguided rednecks walking around with flags that say “white pride worldwide” I think that falls well enough under freedom of expression that I wouldn't want to set a precedent of allowing cops to suppress it. That is by no means suggesting that such actions should be endorsed in any way. In fact when one group is using their right to freely express their views that others consider abhorrent, the only legitimate action is to respond in kind, preferably with greater numbers, and that's exactly what was done. Just because the cops don't have the right to stop people from marching through my city inciting hate and intimidating non-whites doesn't mean that ordinary citizens have to stand idly by and permit it, active opposition is essential. Finally I'd like to address some dismissive comments I saw on the ctv comments page for this news story, claiming that the anti-racist activists were nothing but a bunch of thugs, anarchists and communists. I'm sure there were some people in our group who wanted to fight the guard, I have to admit I wouldn't have been very upset to see any of those pricks get a good punch to the mouth. That said they were in the minority and I actually overheard one individual expressing a desire to fight but an understanding that we couldn't lower ourselves to that and that the higher peaceful road was appropriate, several others nearby agreed with him. There was also a substantial communist and anarchist presence. Frankly I think the fact that not a single mainstream political party was willing in any way to express solidarity with our movement while anarchists and communists were actively involved in combating discrimination says more negative things about our democratic representatives than it does anarchists or communists.

Inconsequential rant

Attention individuals who have those stupid roller suitcases with telescoping handles and castor wheels (even worse if it's just a little caddy to hold your handbag), I hate you. Seriously, pick up your shit and walk with it, you are inconveniencing everyone in a 10 meter radius of you. You have arms for a reason.

Love Cornucrapia (and no doubt many other commuters)

Behavioral Economics Experiment Rd. 2

I waited too long before doing this post to get as detailed as the last one, but it was still an interesting enough experience that I thought I'd relate it. The majority of the experiment was the same, same room, even one of the people had been in the experiment last time with me. Once again there were two teams who never met and we were asked to solve a series of questions as a team. This time it was word jumbles and number sequences, both of them quite simple. The nature of this game was similar to the first, in that you had an initial holding of 10 dollars that you could contribute to a pot to be multiplied. The difference was, whereas before there was only one other person contributing to the pot, in this case there were 5 people from one team and 1 person from the other, all putting in money and having it divided equally between all parties. As a final twist you got to guess what the average contribution of the team of 5 would be and if you were within a dollar, you won a dollar. Additionally, assuming you weren't the 1 person from the other team you got to guess how much they would contribute, again winning a dollar if you were within a dollar of their actual contribution. All told it was rewarding to see how actual economic research is conducted and it was interesting analyzing the differences between the two experiments to try and figure out what sort of things the researcher was likely looking for. Making an easy $20 doesn't hurt my feelings either.