Except when it isn’t, which is the case 99.99% of the time.
100 potential sellers and 100 potential buyers is a free market.
100 potential sellers and 2 potential buyers is not (purchasing power of Tescos on farmers)
100 potential buyers and 2 potential sellers is not (getting a bank account)
The wannabe so called “science” (it is anything but a science) of economics only really works with free markets, it doesn’t work at all well with monopolies or duopolies, which is why everything that is not a free market is described as a free market, otherwise all those economists etc would be unemployed innit.
E-bay is pretty damn close to a free market, so the price of X year and model and condition of used Harley on ebay is not *that* different to the price in the nearest official HD dealership, but the price of an old PC of given spec is vastly different to an official PC maker outlet.
Most products are disposable, in the sense that official outlets for the new items never stock any used examples ever… PC’s are a good example, go into an Apple store and try to buy an iphone3 or a G2 mac.
“There is no margin in it” and “it would affect the sales of new” and “we don’t have to room” are just excuses, the truth is they have a “business model” that excludes it, and anything with a business model is not a free market.
Going back to the Harleys, the reason you or I or anyone else can NOT buy direct from the factory is another business model, which is why pseudo free market forces only ever apply to used Harleys, never to new ones, that’s a franchised monopoly dude.
I’m paying 99 pence a litre at the pumps now, despite the fact that crude has crashed to 1980’s levels, which means it should be 35 pence a litre, and all those “economic” arguments about why it ain’t so because the raw cost is only a small factor in the costs of production and distribution are total bullshit, because I am comparing apples to apples, they were all there along with all the same costs and processes back in the 80’s.
This is the effect of 100 potential buyers and 1 or 2 colluding sellers, it is NOT a free market.
It’s (Free Market) a bit like the “Men and Women are equal before the Law” thing, in that it is injurious to you because it is not true, but it becomes 4 or 5 times as injurious to you if you are stupid enough to *believe* that it is true.
Once you throw out “Men & Women are equal” you throw out any hope of going to a court to get justice, because it is all manipulated in advance to fuck you over, and in the same way once you throw out the “Free Market” you throw out any hope that the system is not fixed to fuck you over at every (profit taking) opportunity.
Once you do that you can invoke the boiling a frog analogy, and know for a certainty that irrespective of the ambient conditions, not only is the water never going to get any cooler, since there is no “Free Market” there is no true “Laws of supply and demand” (go try and buy a new Harley direct from the factory, or a new Zanussi, or a new Samsung telly) which means those involved in the profit taking can and will just take their toys and go home.
It is a fallacy spurred by delusions and notions of a Free Market that someone somehow somewhere will rise to the challenge and supply any need, at a cost, to meet any demand…
… meaning that that thing may be available, but the price will be fucking extortionate and ruinous, but someone *will* supply that demand.
To take the Titanic lifeboat analogy, it is after all a finite world, it does not mean that in a free market the seats on the lifeboat start getting auctioned off ebay style, and by the time 3 seats have been sold only the well heeled in first class can afford any of them, and the last seat sold will go for more than the previous 99.
What is does mean is that there are no lifeboats, they got taken away (stretching the analogy here and crossing timelines etc) and were used to rescue people on the Lusitania.
Europe is crawling with fucking “economic” migrants, but as the recent RT drone cam footage shows, there is no shortage of empty shelter in Damascus, so if the Free Market applies, it is the perfect place to go TO, and set yourself up as a letting agent.
The Free Market states that somebody, somewhere, will want that shelter, and therefore someone, somewhere will see that need, and set up in business to be an intermediary between those seeking shelter and all those thousands of deserted shelters in Damascus.
(I use the word shelter not home deliberately, they are not homes, but they are shelter and sound much better than the freezing streets of Cologne)
Those same “potential customers and renters” face a choice, go to Europe and get given a ton of free shit and exemptions, or stay put and PAY for crap shelter, that is anything BUT a free market.
Once you accept that there is no such thing as a free market, you must of necessity accept that there is no market demand and supply, which means that there is no guarantee that there will *always* be someone willing to sell you food or clothing or toilet paper, or fuel, or medicines, or anything at all really, at *any* price.
Once you accept that, you must of necessity accept that when you CAN buy these things, but you ARE being gouged on the price, you are firmly in that no-man’s land between reasonable and affordable for your own prosperity pricing models, and not available at any price models, and that no-man’s land is not that wide or deep in area.
And then you look at history and see an absolute across the board no exceptions correlation between history and times and places where shit was not available at any price and people died of malnutrition or starvation or disease or injury or whatever.
It’s a delusion to sit here and look at my stash of 53 toilet rolls, and imagine a Kosovo like situation where I could get the use of a nice young mainly white girl in exchange for one of them, and sit back in my central heating sipping coffee and smoking a fag and saying bring it on…. I may as well have delusions about selling the concept of electricity and the wired morse telegraph to the Romans.
If there was a free market and laws of supply and demand, I could purchase small quantities (albeit at vastly inflated prices) of all kinds of interesting things like ebola and plutonium and 13 year old virgin slaves, since there is no free market, there are only scams and con jobs, where you can get parted from your money and so called “suppliers” who have neither the intention nor the ability to actually supply the thing they are touting.
Since there is no free market, and no absolute supply and demand, we can know for a fact that everything that *looks* like a free market is in fact anything but.
Look at the illegal drugs trade, something I know something about, peripherally and one step removed at least, or look at the illegal weapons trade.
There is no free market value based sliding scale, where a .22 LR rimfire cartridge is worth 10% of a 9 mm parabellum centrefire cartridge, or a marijuana high is worth 1% of a cocaine high, nor has there been since the free love sixties and seventies when people produced and supplied for the love of it, not for the love of money…
Dope did not get expensive when it got made illegal, it got expensive when business models came in and people realised there was a financial killing to be made.
Ergo, legalising dope won’t make it cheaper, or better, or more available, or safer, or anything else, it just means the state will collect taxes on it and the dealers will declare their earning on their tax returns, and before you know it, it will be like trying to buy a Harley direct from the factory.. oh.. wait.. it already is… franchised monopoly.
In the USA, the difference between Trump and his opponents is one of degree, Trump is a man who plows his own capitalist furrow, whereas his opponents are members of a cabal cooperative farm commune that plow their own closed field together.
They will ALL auction off the lifeboat seats on the Titanic, and when it suits them remove ALL the lifeboats and take them to the Lusitania.
Trump will just do it alone under the Trump brand, the others in the collective are more chickenshit and will do it behind closed doors as a committee and call it the Lusitania Liberation Act, to those drowning on both vessels, the effect is the same, Davy Jones’ dinner guests for eternity.
This is the source of Trump’s popularity, people would rather be fucked over by someone who will publicly admit they are fucking you over for a profit, than they would be fucked over by a spineless cabal.
Again, nothing new in history, look what Mummar Quaddafi did for the citizens of Libya as a whole, go on, look it up, free schooling, healthcare, housing for newlyweds, loans for entrepreneurs, irrigated the desert, the list is vast, compare and contrast to the Saudis, who *could* have done exactly the same thing, but they are a faceless spineless cabal.
Adolf, Mao, Castro, Napoleon, Atilla, Franco, the list goes on and on, and despite their many failings, there are still those who hold a soft spot in their heart for these people.
There is no free market, and there is no democracy.
Before Obama was elected I publicly warned many american friends that they were about to vote a black Tony Blair into office, look what the last 8 years has wrought for america…
The choice facing america now is WHO they want to preside over their own buttfucking and abandonment and exploitation, a Trump, or a spineless cabal member?
La France still stands out as a shining beacon in human history, *lots* of places said fuck this and the masses rose up and deposed all the despots.
La France was the only place that ever guillotined all the bastards.
Oh yeah, this shit applies to ISIS and the world of terrorism too, standouts are individuals like Breivik and Carlos and the Unabomber.
Free Market my ass.
A black Tony Blair; what a perfect analogy.
Comment by A.F.O.R. — January 17, 2016 @ 10:00 pm