Free Market Capitalism vs Poker

Reading Zachvac's sig;

This is supposed to be free market capitalism. If you fail, you lose......

Got me to thinking that the world can not afford a completely Free Market Capitalist system. Unless the winners are prepared to bury, en masse, huge numbers of losers, it is not even in their best interests to allow unregulated Free Market Capitalism to continue.

IMO that system encourages too much speculation by folks/conglomerates that don't understand what they are doing.

Speculation is the donk in a freeroll, shoving every hand early in hopes of getting that big stack, ideally to then be able to bully the rest of his particular world (that table/tourney). Seldom does this cause anything but grief for all parties involved.

So, again IMO, regulation is a MUST! How much regulation?

How much aggression at the table? How far do we deviate from our own personal Starting Hands Charts, proven business plans? How far do we let business go with speculative ventures, how long do we let the bully bully us? At some point we all hope to have an A game, most will settle for a profitable B+ game, business want to see a steady profit, and hope for an occasional windfall, while working to improve their business plan.

How timid can we be and still be successful? How aggressive can we be without tilting either ourselves, or the rest of the world (table).

Free Market Capitalism in its purest form is the crap shoot even we poker players want to avoid. We learn that playing 72offsuit is an unprofitable business plan. Roughly akin to investing in metal detectors at the beach, where it would take a conglomerate a gazillion dollars to double their money, but in the process they would cost the rest of us 3 gazillion bucks to restore the beach. Whereas the occasional foray by an individual with a hand held detector occasionally finds treasure, less frequently than we find ourselves in the BB with 72o, and the flop is 772.

As poker players, we learn to regulate ourselves. It is an ongoing, fine tuning each day thing. Business, IMO, has to have regulations.

I'm a socialist too... we have to take care for our world and people here, not just take...

(Unless they are total fish that is -- not sure the poker/capitalism analogy works for me)

Although even in the poker world the losing players are helped out by loans etc.
Many are just staked the buy-ins in the hope of lesser or non-players will gain profit in return.

Of course in every system there will always be the ones who are just take, take, take (greed is good etc) and then there are others who are prepared to share the love.

It would all work if it wasn't for humans

I'm a free market capitalist. I believe in it 100%. socialism is for loosers.
you don't want to work hard to gt ahead. you do your 9-5 go home and say "I"ve done my best" and you can't pay your bills. now your hand is out, seeing what you can get for free.
Greed is good. in a poker game, your I T M with a huge chip attvantage, do you sit out and take 3rd or 4th? do you say lets chop the pot? usually not. IMO that system encourages too much speculation by folks/conglomerates that don't understand what they are doing.

" that system encourages too much speculation by folks/conglomerates that don't understand what they are doing." Are you kidding. Did you even think about this. without speculation there wouldn't be a lot of that would of happened. Insurance, credit cards, produce in winter just to name a few.

So, again IMO, regulation is a MUST! How much regulation?

How much aggression at the table? How far do we deviate from our own personal Starting Hands Charts, proven business plans? How far do we let business go with speculative ventures, how long do we let the bully bully us? At some point we all hope to have an A game, most will settle for a profitable B+ game, business want to see a steady profit, and hope for an occasional windfall, while working to improve their business plan.
So, again IMO, regulation is a MUST! How much regulation?

How much aggression at the table? How far do we deviate from our own personal Starting Hands Charts, proven business plans? How far do we let business go with speculative ventures, how long do we let the bully bully us? At some point we all hope to have an A game, most will settle for a profitable B+ game, business want to see a steady profit, and hope for an occasional windfall, while working to improve their business plan.

sorr , didnt finish. last sentence Quote desnt make sense. a bit of a contrdiction. if my bussiness is a cafe and I m 2 blocks outside the city limits I can't have a liquor lisence. so all the dirnkers goes to the compatition. 2 blocks away. regulation. for who? what type? U.S gov. gave regulation to the bankers and you see what a mess that was. what do you do for a living and how much regulation are you willing to deal with before you scream.?
speculative ventures got you online poker.

ok I've actually thought a good deal about this. I'm of the opinion that the only regulations should be those enforcing anti-trust laws (because lack of competition defeats the purpose of free market capitalism) and enforcing contracts. Note that means with this regulation Madoff would not have gotten away with it because he was not honest with what he was selling.

Anyway, yes this means I would be for the abolition of the minimum wage and many other such ideas that others consider radical.

I find it kind of funny that you talk of the lazy rich as well. Name me a few people who are rich that are not earning their money. Obviously the work of a CEO is far different from that of a blue-collar worker, but the value of work is what someone is willing to pay for it. It's good old fashioned supply and demand, if what the people bring to the company is worth the salary they pay them, that means their work is obviously worth that much, is it not? Obviously with recent events and government bailouts (which as you can tell by my signature, I completely opposed), these companies got money they would not have gotten if we had stuck to free-market capitalism, and used it to pay executive bonuses. No surprises there, they were a failing company, why would you expect them to do anything but take the money you give them and run? With a free market approach the companies would go under. There would be a small period where the market would adjust to make up for the fact that the bubble burst and the companies made bad forcasts. The housing companies thought they could sell them at a higher price. Now for their failed predictions they're going to have to eat the cost. That's what the free market is about, it provides an incentive all on its own that is completely defeated when the government starts bailing people/corporations out.

In a poker game, if I have 20% to win and am only getting 2:1 I snap fold. If on the other hand I have 20% to win and triple up (what 2:1 means) and the other 80% I get my money back from the government, it's an easy call. These bailouts encourage this dangerous speculation, while without the prospect of being bailed out when they fail, the free market would ensure that speculators actually have an incentive to be successful.



Anyway, let's get back to the OP. Poker is a great example of how great a free market is, but in and of itself is not an economic system. In an economic system we are able to produce as much wealth as we consume (consume defined as for example using it to buy food that will lose all value once we eat it, the loss in value of a home as we live in it, etc.). In fact let's go back to the beginning. It is possible for humans to hunt their own food, build their own houses (more like huts), and live in the wilderness and basically make everything individually. Then comes specialization. One guy hunts 10 deer, one guy builds 10 houses, etc. and all of a sudden they can do more because specialization has enabled people to produce more wealth. If say there were 10 vital services needed to live, I could build 10 houses way faster than I could build a house, hunt, and do all 10 things basically. Sorry this is a bit abstract but I'd like to start at the basics. With specialization and then the beginning of machinery, we all become more efficient so we can have more. Now we can have one person producing several thousand things so we can use all of these, note that this still assumes all "things" are of equal value, we'll get off of that later. So if a thousand people can produce a thousand of one thing each, now all of a sudden everyone can have a car, a house, a plot of land, a vacation, an education, a computer, and can afford entertainment. All of this comes directly from specialization and machinery.

Now we recognize that not everything is worth the same amount, and not everyone can produce the same amount of everything. If you can produce 10 cars in a day and another person can produce 10 hamburgers in a day, they're not going to swap and call it even. If he wanted to, the car producer could produce 9 cars and say 2 burgers. Even though the previous example is more efficient, 10 cars is clearly worth more than 9 cars and 2 burgers, the second example is important as well. It's the threat of competition, this drives prices down. The burger guy knows he has to sell it low or else someone else will start producing and selling lower. This is basic economics and can be summed up with a supply and demand graph.

With this model in mind, assuming anti-trust laws are enforced (see above for where I mentioned acceptable regulations), what you are able to be paid is exactly what you are worth. If you are worth more, you would be able to find someone to pay you more for your services. Now here's where exessive greed is a good thing. Say your work is worth 100k/year, so someone would be able to still make a profit from receiving your work and paying you 100k/year. But the guy who would be paying you already earns 15 million/year. He doesn't care whether he gets an extra 10k profit from you (ie 110k increase, pays you 100k, net of 10k), 15 million and 15.01 million are the same right? So he hires his friend who slacks off, doesn't work hard, and costs the company money. But it's only a few grand, and the millionaire isn't greedy. So now the economy is less productive, because less goods are produced, and you unfairly have to take a job for less despite being worth 100k in a completely free market with greed and competition.

Contrast that with the millionaire who wants every bit of money he can. He has 15 million in the bank but he wants 15 million and a cent damnit. He is a jerk and fires people over stealing paperclips, doesn't let them take much time off, etc. But he is efficient, he hires the best employees for the job, and attempts to maximize his profits. Now the economy wins because more goods are produced at a lower price (ie he's using his money efficiently, not wasting money on bad investments through bad employees) and hard work is effectively rewarded, which is the entire driving purpose of free market capitalism. When hard work and production are rewarded, the market is most efficient so it's a win-win in my book. The hard-working/intelligent/productive get rewarded and the goods are used efficiently.

Which gets us into speculation and poker which are extremely similar the more I think about it. I have a decent article on the purpose of speculators in the economy. It does a much better job than I can every do of explaining it but bottom line is that they keep prices as close as possible to their true value as well as punish bad speculators. Like I said I'll post an article on that but I'm going to discuss how that relates to poker. Let's look at input and output to the poker economy. The input is obviously all from players depositing. The output goes to rake, winning players, and taxes. Now let's look at a losing player. There are a few categories.

1. The social gambler, wants to play for fun and knows ahead of time he's donating x amount of dollars for a good time and a chance to maybe get lucky, but he understands he's bad, doesn't try to play good, and realizes his ev is very bad (even if he doesn't think in those terms). This gambler doesn't fall under the speculator tab, but under the services tab. The winning players are providing a service to the social gambler. They get the money, he gets a fun time, casino gets its rake, it's a win-win. This entertainment is obviously worth exactly what he pays for because that's how much he's willing to spend on it.

2. The bad social player, very much like #1 however he thinks he's better than he is. He plays for fun and doesn't study but unlike #1 he thinks he's at least break-even or maybe a slight loser when in reality is just a huge donator. Here the winning players fund his entertainment but mainly make their money off his incorrect speculation. He speculates that his ev is close to neutral and is willing to pay a few bucks for the entertainment. In reality he's spending much more than a few bucks and the free market correctly punishes him for his bad speculation. He invested in himself, thinking he was worth more than he actually was, and this bad investment punishes him for making it, much like someone investing in a stock that's likely to fail.

3. Bad player, there to win but he sucks and doesn't know it. Not gonna go into too much detail because it's basically #2 although he thinks his ev is positive when in reality it's negative.

In fact we can even expand this analogy to winning players. Say someone wins at 0.5 PTBB/100 and thinks the game is worth playing if his ev is 1.5 PTBB/100. He's undder the mistaken impression that he is a 3 PTBB/100 winner. He's losing value here, because in his mind it is not worth the 0.5 but that's what he's getting. The opportunity cost of playing poker is not worth it because of his incorrect speculation. And because of this in the long run he will net a loss if we include opportunity cost all because of his incorrect speculation.

Hopefully this made sense, feel free to respond to anything here, I realize this is only an opinion and am interested to hear other opinions.

http://mises.org/story/2381, removed footnotes and a few links.

Loving this debate, love that it's logical, civil and well thought out.


My husband and I ran a carpet and upholstery cleaning company for 12 years. Here's how I believe this relates:

We spent more money than any of our local competition (43 competitors) in our county on what we felt would make us the elitist company in the area; this included schooling for employees and purchasing of top of the line equipment and cleaning chemicals to name a few.

Although there is no requirement, we insisted that our entire staff become IICRC certified. This is the certification company known world-wide to all carpet cleaners. Think of it like a plumber or an electirician - who would you rather have? One who has his Master's License that took years of formal schooling and on the job training to learn and master his trade or the local guy who took a class once in high school, interned briefly for a company, learned some basics and started his own company charging slightly lower than his competition?

We spent thousands of dollars on schooling for most employees, their knowledge on carpets, types, fibers, fabrics, ph levels, chemicals, stains & types and their ph levels, proper equipment functions, etc; you name it, if it related to carpet/upholstery cleaning, they had intimate knowledge of it. In fact, our employees were so knowlegable we charged a consulting fee because we often were sought out by other competitors in other counties we didn't service on how to get a certain type of stain out or the like. We sent employees out to local business's to train their staff on how to properly maintain their carpets/upholsery.

We also charged a higher price for our service, guaranteed all workmanship 100%. Clients often called for price and got a nice "spiel" on why our prices are a little higher. Why they should choose our company vs the competition.

While the economy was good, our business flourished, we grew to a point that we had to ask ouselves "how big do we want to be?" & "how big can we get and still deliver the very best?". We made a decision that was best for us because we had the freedom to do so.

We were also pleased that 90% of our business was repeat business. We were able to get to the point of spending less money on advertising.

We also were pleased that we had an edge on the competition, we had more IICRC certified technicians with their Masters than any of our competitors in all of Northern Michigan - in fact, we had more than any other company north of Detroit all the way up to the U.P. - that's saying a lot!

When we first started, my husband made the comment that he wished it were required (regulated) that all carpet and upholstery cleaning companies be IICRC certified. Initially, I agreed with him. He also thought that there should be a standard pricing stucture so we didn't lose clients to cheaper companies with poor workmanship. Initially I agreed there to.

However, at our peak, we learned that most people wanted knowledgable contractors, quality workmanship and they were willing pay a little extra to have it. We were able to offer better pay to our employees than our competitors did as well. We recieved phone calls and applications a couple times a week from those working for our competitors seeking employment with us.

Over time, we also learned that there were some clients we just didn't want, we turned work away. Let our competition have the difficult clients, crap jobs, we had flourished and could choose. It was great.

Due to so many competitors not being certified, not as knowledgable as our team, not as good as us, we gained a lot of permanent clients.

Had we not been in a free market society, we may not have had the choices we were able to make. We choose to offer the very best and deliver it. We choose to pay our employees higher than the competition. We choose all of these things because we were free to do so. We also choose to charge a premium for these services, and we got it. We also made damn good money during those times, bought a bigger house, better personal vehicles, "big-boy toys", took vacations, etc;

Then the economy peaked out and started on it's downward spiral. We began losing profits, customers, had to lower our prices, lay off a couple employees, do more of the on-site work ourselves, stop taking vacations, stop going out to eat, etc;

Companies and businesses also started cutting back. Cleaning services all around took a hit. Our bread & butter was our commercial clientelle. Our weekly clients went to bi-weekly, our bi-weekly clients to monthly, our monthly clients to quarterly, etc; Some of our biggerst commercial companies bought equipment and hired us to train their staff on how to use it so we lost some business altogether.

In '07 we had several of our commercial clients go out of business, many of them filed bankruptcy, listed us, and we never got paid. We lost thousands on bankruptcies alone, we still paid our commissioned employees though, it wasn't their fault. But we choose to do that, we didn't have to. The gov. wasn't telling us we had to. I know of several companies that had the policy of if they didn't get paid then their commissoned employees didn't either. It was a risk the employees knew about in advance.

We found ourselves with a choice to make: continue to adjust, ride out the poor economy or sell and start something new, not so prone to economic swings. We choose the later. In Jan. of '08 we sold our company (for a pretty penny in comparison to the other companies that were selling). We didn't have a regulation on how much we were allowed to sell it for. We picked the asking price, one of our long term employees ended up being the purchaser. Therefore we agreed to lower the price, still made more than the other companies around us that sold or just plain went under, but the new owner agreed to keep the long term existing staff which was important to us. (They did re-negotiate pay levels as was the new owners right to do so - again free market).

We were able to do all this due to a free market. I'm not sure I would own a business if I were told exactly how I had to run it, what I had to pay my employees, what I had to charge, etc; And I'm pretty sure our company wouldn't have been as successful as it was while we owned it had we not had the freedom to make our own choices.

*Another point is this: my husband and I spent the first few years living in poverty while establishing a reputation and client base. We choose to not receive food stamps or the like, but we also choose to not buy extras, no steak, no crab legs or lobster, no alcohol, etc; We struggled but did so responsibly. We didn't have cable tv, nice cars, toys, didn't go to the movies, no vacations, didn't go out to eat but once a year, only purchased used furniture, used clothes, used toys for the kids, etc; Garage sales and goodwill were our best friends! We also both worked 60-80 hrs a week in the business. We had 4 kids living in a 2 bedroom house with some land with a pole barn on it, that's how we started. We were packed in that house like sardines in a can.

We sacrificied and worked long hours to establish our business. In a socialistic society I imagine we would not have to do that, or at least not to the extreme we did. I also believe that we would not have been able to reap the rewards to the extent that we did either. For us it was worth it. And all of it was our choice.


To me, I think a lot of people would like to see socialism when times are tough, the economy is in recession/depression and love the free market aspect when the economy is flourishing and their paychecks are fatter.

I couldn't imagine poker being regulated this way. If I were told exactly how much profit I am allowed to make, exactly what skills were required to play, where I am allowed and not allowed to play, I may not have started.

Think of all the sharks I've fed while learning to play! The ones I still do when I go on tilt or have to leave a sng or mtt because my kids are fighting or get hurt! I make a pretty good profit overall from live play, I'm still struggling adjusting to online play. Online players everywhere will have lower profits if I'm not there to feed them! LOL!

I'm not real sure what type of regulations are being referred to in this post for poker, my initial instincts are geared towards free market, but I'd like to know more details, what others have in mind.

I am completely impressed with the nature of this debate, not only in its depth of analysis, but also in its civility!

Count me in as one of the libertarians...a big fan of Milton Freidman and Tom Sowell. To me, individual freedom is the cornerstone of my political beliefs. 99 times out of 100, a careful examination of an economic problem reveals that the problem was not caused by capitalism, but by a failure of government...especially government failing in its key and legitimate roles...national security, internal law and order, public works, and keeping the road clear for free competition. Of crouse, those same politicians and business leaders preach free enterprise and free markets, but then act to restrict competition. Free markets, which are non-zero-sum, then become zero-sum as some groups benefit at the expense of others from the government action that restricts comeptition. And, all of us lose as our freedom is restricted in the process.

I think you are naive there. Executive pay got ridiculously high not because it is actually worth it, but rather because we let a kind of oligarchy develop where the salary of a CEO of a company is decided by its management board, which consists mainly of other CEOs, and they all have a clear private interest in letting executive pay get completely disproportionate to its real worth.

The top executive job market is not a properly functionning market. It is rigged with incompleted information, hidden interests, trusts, ...

free market capatilism is an illusion- the carrot in front of the horse

those with control of land or money will with any reasonable amount of brains use their "big stack" as a club to enslave others trying to acheive similar wads of cash - escalating to corporate levels(my mob vs yours)

the result is simply a pyramid

this system is highly inefficient and destructive - to people - to the environment.

at the top of the poker pyramid -- the house

ok I'm not an expert in how companies run at the top, but the management board has a stake in the company does it not? In fact aren't they representatives of the shareholders?

And your comment that what they get paid is disproportionate to its real worth is a bit odd because the definition of their real worth is what someone will pay them. If you are a good enough salesman to sell a phone book for 5 million dollars, your phone book (and your service of selling it I guess) is worth 5 million dollars. The money they get is coming from somewhere, and they are not stealing it (assuming you're not talking about cases of fraud/embezzlement/theft), thus what they do is clearly worth what they are paid. Whether you feel they deserve that pay is an entirely different subject, but in a free market when someone is able to voluntarily offer a skill for a certain amount of money, their service is thus worth at least that much money.

I have started to respond to you Zach at least 3 times, never hitting the submit button.

While I truly believe, you believe what you are thinking, this boils down, IMO, to the big problem with the Libertarian mindset, and most Free Market Capitalist. They are pretty similar.

With either of those mindsets, there is an assumption that the issue of the economy is a contained, limited population of like minded people. Neither ever has addressed the real problem.

There are 6 BILLION people involved here. That could easily be 8-10 Billion by the next census.

That free market capitalism model assumes that 3 billion of them could be successful Free Marketeers. This is of course, absurd.

It never has accounted for the fact that most of those 6 billion, are either incompetent, incapable,or educated insufficiently to succeed in a pure free market.

The whole notion of a pure free market, begins to look like a survival of the fittest scenario. Think Conan. Think Barbarian Hoards.

Somewhere along the lines, the overwhelmingly vast majority (99.999999999999...%) of humans decided to adopt the Social Contract: In essence, I will not kill you, but in exchange, I expect a decent life.

The free market approach denies that decent life bye effectively allowing the (financial) killing of individuals. Granted this is a bit simplistic, but it is what it is.

When the free market mindset shows it can incorporate everyone, not just a privileged few (or even many), then it will properly self regulate. It won't happen. Almost by definition, it can't happen. And so it becomes necessary for the masses (governments) to impose regulation.

Specific question for Zach, or any Pure Free Market Capitalist;
What will you propose/do when 1/2 the folks around you are hungry and pissed?

yes and no. you have an ideal vision of capitalism where shareholders actually control the companies directly and negociate compensation with its executives to the best of their interest. It does not happen that way for most publicly traded companies. Stock ownership is just too diluted for that to happen.

Executive pay is usually decided by a compensation committee. Take General Electric Co. for instance. Link here:

http://investing.businessweek.com/re....asp?symbol=GE

if you click on the directors' names, you will see that most of them are actually CEOs of other big companies. Not private stakeholders at all.

That means they have a collective interest in inflating executive salaries as their own will be largely aligned to the market price, which they can manipulate through their participation in the compensation committee of other companies.

Not at all. In fact the mindset assumes that all people are different and have different skills that all are important for an entire economy. While my analogy may have been simple, the extension of it really does apply imo. Instead of simply needing a few things to survive, now we have things like health insurance, entertainment, the internet, cars, air conditioning, running water, and so many other services that people use. As there get to be more and more people we can become more and more specialized and the economy can grow and grow as people perfect technology and get more and more efficient at what they do.

What is a successful free marketeer? Most people are able to produce enough to support themselves. Even working at McDonalds for near minimum wage, most people are able to live. It isn't a glamerous life by any stretch of the word, but it is enough to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. It all goes back to the fact that people can do enough work to build a hut, hunt their food, and find water. If their skills are more specialized and they can produce more they will make more than that, but back to basics if one can work enough to provide for themselves there is no such thing as an unsuccessful free marketeer, apart from the disabled and the lazy (not grouping them together, two completely separate groups there).

Educated insufficiently? Just the phrasing of it shows what I feel to be a misunderstanding. First off this is an entire other topic that I'll not go too far into, but I think the government running the schools is one of the biggest mistakes ever made. Instead of caring about learning, they care about results and test scores. One of the many reasons I attended private school through 8th grade, despite the fact that the money the private school spent per pupil was LESS than the money spent by the public school per pupil in the budget. So it wasn't like I went to a fancy private school, it was a non-profit Montessori school that spent its money on classroom materials rather than tests and textbooks.

But let's go back to your point. Unfortunately you are right on the aspect that those with richer parents are going to be able to afford to get their kids better educated, and thus give them more value speaking in simplest terms. So what do you propose, we disallow parents from spending money on their kids? Is it a bad thing when a parent spends their money on a tutor for their child? This is where although there is an unfairness, it's an unfairness in life, and we really can't do much to change it. A person born to farmers who need them to work long hours on the farm and has little time to go to school is not going to be as valuable to society as someone who can go to school, get help from educated parents who can also afford to send them to a good college, etc. Even if it's the same person, the circumstances they were born change it all. And that's sad imo, but it's sad on the part of life, not free market capitalism. Some people are born to abusive parents, some are born to parents who can hardly support themselves let alone a kid. Some are born without a leg, some are born without sight or hearing. Life is not fair, but is your response to this to steal from the rich and give to the poor? Don't get me wrong I'm not against welfare or food stamps or other government programs that many others with my line of thinking would oppose. I personally think that if a person has had bad luck in life, and is unemployed and in need of money through no fault of his own, that I have no problem with the government helping them out. But if for example it's a high school dropout who didn't bother to acquire any skills and now all of a sudden is broke and living on the street because he ****ed up his life earlier, I think he should live with the consequences and to steal from others to pay for his bad decisions would be wrong.
Nope, we still have laws. We're not talking about anarchy here, we're talking about a free market. This means that two consenting adults are allowed to make any agreement they wish. Please tell me how this would lead to anything having to do with Conan or Barbarian Hoards. Government regulation beyond anti-trust laws and enforcing contracts essentially is saying "well I know both sides are happy with the agreement, but we're going to prohibit you from doing that". This is the exact same approach anti-poker people take btw. We know you want to gamble the money, your opponents want to gamble the money, the casino wants to provide the service, but we know better for you so we're going to prohibit you from doing it. That's exactly what most regulations are, including laws like minimum wage laws. The government is here to protect our rights, including those of not being attacked by Barbarian Hoards.

No the social contract is I will not kill you, harm you, steal from you, or take away your freedoms, and in return I expect these rights to be protected for me as well. Have you studied anything about the concept of the "Social contract"? Let me know when you can get me a reference where it talks about not allowing two consenting adults to enter a contract. Your version of the social contract seems to be more of a gang mentality with threats.

I disagree, but it's hard to address something so vague. Please expand, preferably with examples.


Can you please use some logic and explain what you're talking about rather than simply taking an editorial written by someone else at face value and repeating it here? Thanks.

But note that if a system incorporates everyone regardless of effort, it does not reward effort. This hurts the overall economy. Look at the system today. Despite the fact that there are some super-rich, the poor in America are the envy of almost everyone in the third world. How many people in America today are literally starving on the streets? Despite a recession, the majority of Americans today do not have to worry about where to find the next meal. They may have to worry about not making the car payment, or lack of healthcare, but in so many countries in the world healthcare would be such a luxury they couldn't even imagine affording. It's been the underlying capitalistic economic system that has allowed this to happen. Why would people study for years at school and work long hours every week if they could just screw around in life and be picked up and "given a decent life"? It's the underlying flaw in socialism.

Anyway, so many people criticize lack of regulation for everything without even mentioning what they're talking about. Read the factcheck.org article about the financial meltdown. Basically factcheck.org is an independent unbiased organization that basically investigates things politicians say as to whether they're factually correct or not. They have a great article on the financial melt-down and they show where despite what moveon.org would have you believe top Democrats and Republicans that are knowledgable in the area talked about how the bill relieving some of the financial regulations actually made the recent recession not as bad.

article about the financial meltdown.
Specific question for Zach, or any Pure Free Market Capitalist;
What will you propose/do when 1/2 the folks around you are hungry and pissed?[/quote]

You're telling me that 50% of the people would not be able to produce as much value as could feed them? That was the basis of my entire original analogy, that at worst case scenario most people can do something that carries enough value for the basic necessities in life.

So I'll respond to that as soon as you can show how 50% of the people would go hungry even if we eliminate 100% of welfare (even though I indicated I have no problem with some welfare given that it is based on unfortunate circumstances and not because of laziness or bad decisions). I'll give you a hint. There's a lot of places like that with socialist/communist governments. I don't know of many like that with a capitalistic economic system.

stop drinking the kool aid zach

free market capitalism in america is as big a farce as democracy

the restrictions and regulations passed by elected officials to the benefit of their buddies corporations make the usa an oligarchy not a democracy

until people get to vote on each issue separately instead of voting for an official who can vote however he pleases we will have no democracy and no free market capitalism

just the rich staying rich at the expense of the poor and middle class , and the environment.

Hmmmmmmmm, is this an election year? You guys made my brain hurt on this one.

The one big difference between free markets and poker is that poker is zero-sum. One can only win AT THE EXPENSE of others at the table. Some people falsely believe that this applies to free markets...the rich only get rich by taking from the poor. In a true free market, nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, those with resources may attempt to rig the game in their favor by using their influence with politicians to grant them special privileges that are not available to others. If politicians cave in to this pressure, then indeed the market is not longer free, but now becomes a zero-sum game. But, this is NOT a failure of the market, but a failure of government....that is, government getting involved in things that are outside of its legitimate responsibilities and helping "rig" the market to benefit some at the expense of others. What we need is NOT more government, if that means government that attempts to make the world more "fair" but redistributing wealth. Instead, what we need to government keeping its hands out of those things that are not part of its legitimate functioning and more government doing what it is supposed to do...keeping the road clear for more competition and more individual freedom. Of course, we each claim that we want government do things that "benefits society," when in fact, those things also line our pockets. Politicians cave into this pressure in hope of being re-elected. No wonder government seems to be on both sides of each issue...all of it being paid for out of our pockets. What we need are constitutional restrictions to keep government from granting special privileges that turn a free market into a zero-sum game.