Honestly I can't find them. Someone told me the employment market is a free market, but I pointed out that minimum wage exists so that can't be true. Where are they? Why do people keep blaming them for failures when they obviously don't exist?
The free market is in the third world.
Strawman...."the world will collapse if we don't control it"...yadda yadda yadda...$0.01/hr wages...child labor...blah blah blah...evil corporations...insane prices...outsourcing...vomit vomit vomit.
There, now craig doesn't have to post in this thread because I already covered everything he's likely to say.
Where do they exist? International waters, perhaps? The "free market" is both a myth and a pipe dream. Be careful what you wish for.
I'm not saying I wish for it, I'm simply asking where? A friend of mine keeps blaming economic problems on the "free market" even after I've proved numerous times that it just doesn't exist in the areas where he blames the problems on. For instance the employment market.
I'm starting to feel people are just parroting "free market" because they don't know what the fuck it means, but they hear their side misuse the word constantly so they believe it true. I used to believe that just because you said something or something has been repeated a lot doesn't make it true, but apparently I'm wrong because people will believe anything if you say it enough.
Somalia has one.
This comment is stupid.
OP is basically correct, a free market does not exist and most people use it in relative terms... is a market more free or less free? What we have is a market economy that has free market leanings (more free), although this continually varies and is always debated. A mixed economy.
When people complain about free markets they don't mean real free markets, they mean markets with too little regulation, controls, or planning.
I don't consider anywhere but somalia to be the free market.
A free market nation would be one with:
No currency.
No copyright laws
No business government regulations (including no min. wage, no labor laws, no regulations on business policies, no anti-discrimination laws).
No environmental government regulations
No protectionism.
No trade agreements.
No anti-trust laws.
No welfare state.
No standing army.
Free enterprise land.
I don't even consider Ayn Rand free market because she believed in copyright laws. Milton Friedman is of the Chicago School, and they're not free market either. However, his son, David Friedman is a free-market advocate.
And what would separate that from anarchy?
What is the definition of working for nothing?
And what would separate that from anarchy?
Taxes, the authority to raise an army, a local militia, courts, citizenship requirements, laws that protect self-ownership. In other words, a government that exists to protect property rights, if that's even possible.
