¡Viva La Market!

How about that market where they throw the fish at you, huh?

Remember when the US had a near-totally unregulated free market? Say, round about the turn of the century? Good thing that never crashed.

Remember when it died in 1913, with the creation of the income tax (pillar of Marxism) the federal reserve (nuther Marxist pillar) and the democratization of the republic (17th amendment)? And when central banking created an artificial boom that peaked in the 1920s, and then crashed?

No fue el free marketo.

Oh SNAP!
Historical banter is my favorite kind of banter.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904

Bla bla bla free market.

Except that it was deregulation, particularly the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act, that caused this mess. And informal economies are much different from free markets.

Yes, unfortunately Iceland hasn't been anarcho-capitalist since the middle ages...and they were heavily invested in Wall Street,

POIDH.

Income taxes and the federal reserve are not pillars of Marxism. They are liberal reforms, aimed at alleviating problems inherent to capitalist economies while keeping the economy essentially capitalist. Remember that the late 1800s were characterized by a series of huge investment-fueled booms and crushing recessions, and I think even you would acknowledge that the market at that time was very unregulated.

Well okay, I'll assume you're asking for references. Here are a couple of articles about it-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.marketturm...

"US banks — particularly investment banks — are in difficulty because they were granted what they wished for. Left to their own devices, several have managed to ruin themselves and create havoc in the international financial system."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7814704.stm

That last one is interesting, it's about how Bush wasn't the main cause of the economic crisis, the Glass-Steagall act was repealed under Clinton. Certainly the government (the Bush administration in particular) made the crisis worse by encouraging banks to give mortgages to people who couldn't afford it, but without regulation the sale of mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and Ponzi schemes would all run rampant. Free-markets might be fine, on relatively small scales, but if the recent financial crisis has shown anything it's that national and international banking needs more government regulation, not less.

The naive belief that no regulation means the system regulates itself is very persistent and very false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Manifesto#10_Conditions_For_Trans...

See #2 and #5

Liberal traditionally means free. Taking money, and setting the value of money is not free.

Do you believe that that's what the federal reserve actually does? And the income tax?

Hmmm...I'm not being fecitious here, but I've never heard that the 1800s were characterized by booms and busts. I know Lincoln did a number on the economy with the civil war, inflation, etc, but that was well into the 1800s.

Interesting article...Keep in mind the language they use. One piece of regulation was swapped for another, and they call this 'deregulation'. You could agree this is in the least inaccurate.

"Glass-Steagall was replaced under the Clinton administration by the Gramm-Leach Financial Modernisation Act. This blurred the lines between the commercial banks that made their money through loans, and the more risky ventures of investment banks. The new bill ended the rules that limited the ability of banks to underwrite securities, which prevented them from engaging in new lines of business such as insurance."

So what does that mean? They are now prevented from 'engaging in new lines of business such as insurance', or the glasshole bill prevented them from doing such?

They were never left to their own devices, only left to relative control, because, as since 1913, the federal reserve still controls the value of money and the interest rates the banks must set.

This statement would be easier to prove if such an event happened in anything resembling a free market.

"They failed to police the market..." (from the 2nd article)

Such statements...yeah.

How does congress 'police the market'? What do they see as a potential failure that the interested parties do not? It's this "Regulated market Jesus" idea that if only congress would die for the sins of the free market, everyone would be saved.

How could regulation have prevented anything? And more importantly, what was the cause of this? Banks do not want to fail. Banks do not want recession (unless they're getting baliouts). The nature of the market is that of a stablizing feedback system. Doing bad business, you lose customers. Doing good business, you gain customers. See flaws in other's practices? Point them out. Sell your business on the lack of these flaws.

When people calling themselves government use guns to get banks to do what they want them to do, the result is chaos. With government, the scum rises to the top.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

Before we can talk about what effects miniscule meddling in the market have, we must address the leviathan which has total control over the market. Hint:

I disagree. A piece of regulation was removed by the Gramm-Leach Financial Modernisation Act, this wasn't an alternative regulation, they were simply repealing Glass-Steagall. You seem to have an all-or-nothing view of things, that deregulation has to mean complete deregulation, I disagree.

The latter. The "new bill" didn't prevent them from doing anything that they could do before.

I think the root of your problem is that you're viewing banks as complete entities, self-preserving organisms which would never knowingly steer themselves towards ruin unless forced to by external constrictions, such as government regulations and interest rates. That's not the case. When the banks go down the majority of the banks employees suffer, and the general population that are invested in those banks suffer, and therefore the government suffers, but some people do profit. High-level executives have the chance to make enough profit from unsound practises that they can get out before the shit hits the fan, or they can make so much that when everything goes wrong they insured against the consequences. It was a high-gain/high-risk game that they were playing, but they were playing mostly with other people's chips.

It's not just in government that the scum rises to the top, it's in buisiness and banking as well. Regulations limit this, they put a leash on the unscrupulous few and prevent their greed from damaging the greater population. I don't think we need to completely deregulate the banking sector as an experiment, to see if it might achieve equilibrium, we've seen what happens when regulations are just slightly relaxed.

The markets might be a stabilising factor in themselves, but there's nothing to say that the point at which they stabilise will beneficial to the general populous, that's where the government comes in, and the government might not be perfect, but they're not static, they're a work in progress. The whole system- the markets, the government, the press, science, art- is a dynamic system, which I think is tending towards a better quality of life for everyone.

Such a conclusion is the very definition of base rate fallacy (see link above).

And again, that ignores the extremely manipulative influence the fed has on money and banking.

Government is the anti-social force which hinders what which would otherwise be progress. People trading voluntarily do one thing, gov't comes in with a gun and forces an alternative.

Unregulated free market capitalism is the bees knees if you're already rich, or young and healthy and well-set on some track to becoming rich. But try being sick or poor. Try being like a friend of mine who's diabetic and found out the company he slaves for cut his health insurance benefits--found out a month after they cut him. Try paying for his insulin on a job in the food services industry.

Right now, the government in this country is so bought by industry lobbyists that it's almost the same as having no government, at all. Without paying fantastically more than we do in taxes, people in Canada and a nationalized health care system that takes care of everybody equally. Also, check out Cuba, for Christsake. Americans who are sick and poor and need expensive medications or expensive surgeries are better off in Cuba, where the doctors will give free treatment, even to foreign nationals.

Watch Michael Moore's film Sicko. Take a real hard, honest look at how the corporate medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex in this country reduces us to commodities, to commodified beasts in an uncaring system. Ask yourself how it is the USA is the richest country in the world, and ranked 34th or so, for health care quality, right below countries as poor as Slovenia.

Health care isn't in the hands of the government here, which means it isn't in the hands of the people. We're treating each other as cattle, as less than human, for as long as this persists. And all of your ultra-right wing Anaracho-capitalist Libertarian claptrap is the exact opposite of what we need to address America's number one biggest problem.

First part of the sentence, yes. Second part of the sentence, I don't get it.

Like in the People's Republic of...wherever?

Never mind.

I'm just a silly old-school liberal with foolish thoughts. Harmless. Academic type.

You don't get it because you don't understand that government has a legitimate and necessary function, as an equalizer. The role of a legitimate government is to serve the people in a way that strikes a proper balance between private initiative (profit motive) and the broader public good.

We have a public health crisis in this country. Addressing such a problem in a way that best serves the interests of everyone is a legitimate function for government, because government is the only tool by which people can peacefully redress grievances and inequities, especially on this scale. Health issues are too important and fundamental to a quality human life for the profit motive in private health care to be allowed to win out over deeper human concerns.

If you can't grasp that, we'll never be having the same conversation when we're posting at each other.

Ok, ok...I admit I dodged most of that post.

Yes, health care is screwed up. I blame regulation. Whether Cuba is a better place to get health care, I don't know. I know that I don't want to live there, though.

Thing is, I don't equate government with people, or fairness, or justice, and never will. As long as we're defining government as using the threat of force to prevent people from organizing themselves as they ordinarily would, victimless crimes, etc, I'm against that. I'm open to any solution that does not involve violence or the threat thereof.

For example, if (forced/legislated) regulation is a good idea, why can't an economist say, "Company A is doing X. X is a bad thing for a business to do, and could cause economic woes. This is why you should not do business with Company A."

Perhaps businesses should not do X. However, I will never support using the threat of force to prevent a business from doing X in the marketplace. So if there is a piece of regulation that should exist (such as, no one under the age of 10 can operate heavy machinery) I won't support such a law, but rather support such a business that does not allow children to operate heavy machinery.

So I'm not against "regulation"...I'm against government regulation. But when people say 'regulation' nowadays, that's what they mean. If there's something banks absolutely should not do and thus, is important enough that society endorses violence against banks who do it, you think there'd be enough people to simply not patronize that bank.

But like I've been repeating, bank regulation is a minor issue compared to the impact of the federal reserve (which is a private syndicate of some of the wealthiest individuals in the world, NOT a government agency).

I just realized the example I used is a bad one, because letting a child operate heavy machinery is negligent in and of itself, and is thus a form of aggression (seeing parents as obligated to care for their child). I was going for an extreme and I overreached.

Umm...replace it with...hmmm...

Most legal regulations that come to mind which are statutory are things which the moral zeitgeist opposes anyways, such as dangerous child labor. The marketplace would likely not even provide an instance of such occuring in modern times.

Regulations for safety, like wearing gloves when handling electircal lines, things like that effect the workers, and it would be bad business for employers to force workers not to wear gloves (I don't know why they would anyways, maybe if it made working more efficient). Anyways, yeah, take the example I initially used with a grain of salt since it's an extreme.

How is it that you equate government regulation with violence? And where does legitimate and enforceable regulation come from besides government? Businesses, like individuals, have to be self-regulating in many, many ways. Nothing works without it. This self-regulation. But it's a normal and legitimate dynamic in human existence that when an individual, or an even larger entity, like a corporation, is out of control in a way that produces significant harm (or even exercising control in an illegitimate and harmful way, like kidnapping someone) that larger forces in the society have a right to step in and stop that. Not with a suggestion, but with the necessary degree of force to stop anything that shouldn't be happening.

Government regulations that apply to businesses, like the banking industry, don't entail firing squads for corporate criminals. The regulations don't involve provisions where corrupt executives who ruin the lives and fortunes of thousands of people can be dragged into the streets by officers of the government, who will then parade them naked, followed by ripping out the convicted white collar criminal's abdominal cavity with a rusty knife, pulling out the intestines, and setting them on fire in front the person's still-living eyes.

The threat of something that would stop all sorts of terrible things from happening, and has been used as punishment for high crimes, in previous centuries. But a modern, Democratic society knows that it degrades itself to barbarity if a threat on that scale is necessary. Degrades itself even worse when you have to make even one case example that you'll follow through with it.

Ergo, we don't endorse such things.

But a threat of jail time, long extensive prison time in a tiny cell, seems like a realistic and acceptable punishment for the worst corporate criminals. It isn't inhumane when compared with the consequences of letting serious crimes go unpunished.

And it's a big enough threat to make some individuals think twice about what they would otherwise try to get away with. When a punishment is sufficient and appropriate to the crime, where can the objection be?

And if it isn't carried out by some sort of "government," a legitimate government chosen and charged with the responsibility to represent all of its citizens equally, then we have no other legitimate measures of binding force.

We are highly evolved primates, friend, but not so evolved that we have no need of collective regulating measures that carry the tooth and tethering of a binding force, instead of merely a conscientious objection.

Canadian here. From what I understand, most working Americans can get health insurance for about 100 a month. We have universal health care. I pay about 100 a month for it (not including prescriptions). The only difference is that it's lower quality (long lines) and I'm forced to pay it. If the Canadian system is so great, why do our people flock down there for treatment they can't get here due to long lines / overcrowding / lack of equipment etc? I'm just pointing out a widely held misconception.

Giggan - you smell like a Libertarian. Check out ReasonTv on the web.

You assert that, but then offer nothing to back it up. What makes you think that 'people trading voluntarily', unregulated, would be more beneficial than our current system? What happens when one of the people trading is Bernard Madoff? If it wasn't for government intervention he would still be out there, stealing money from everyone from the working class to the ultra-rich, multi-billion dollar corporations to charities. Or are you going to blame his Ponzi scheme on the 'manipulative influence the fed has on banking'?

Right, and in your unregulated system what protects the impartiality and freedom of the press? What's to stop "company A" from simply denying that they've been doing X, or accusing their competitors of doing X, Y or Z? Like I said, it's not just in government that the scum rises to the top. Whoever runs the best smear campaign makes the most money, whoever has the most money can continue to smear and surpress their opposition. Given a choice between the government enforced regulation of business or business enforced surpression of criticism and opposition I know which one I would prefer.

The point made in that statement was not one of utility but one of actuality. That is what government does, they are an inherently anti-social force. You may think they have a practical utility, but that does not change the fact that they are by definition anti-social.

Who's Mortimer Khan?...err, Bernard Madoff?

Without knowing anything about this guy, I can presume he's a ponzi-schemist.

That said, did gov't prevent some asshole from ripping off people? No. Can they? No. Assholes rip people off, it's like their job. Which is why I support people being wise with their money, checking into who they're investing with, etc. This doesn't mean I blame individuals who do get ripped off for being irresponsible, cuz like I said, it happens. I'd say the burden of proof is on you to show how Savior Government can prevent assholes from being assholes.

Ahh, I think you've located the inherent difference between us. You see rights as grants from govenrments, I see them as the inherent possession of conscious, volitional beings.

Freedom is the realization that no one grants you freedom, it is not a priviledge, it is your inherent right. Rights such as freedom of the press extend from such rights which compliment self-ownership. It needs no privleged protection, it is inherent. Rights can only be violated, they can never be taken away.

The inherent freedom of the press. If you don't want company A doing X, then assurance that they are not could be a condition of doing business with them. If they don't meet it, don't give them your business.

Though we do agree that scum rises to the top in government, correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

From not giving a business your support. If there's enough demand for a majority of congress to say 'you can't do this', shouldn't there be enough of a market share of consumers saying, 'we will not buy your product if you do this'?

Like the example I used earlier, children no longer work dangerous labor (legally) because it has become morally unacceptable. That government passed a law preventing it may have had an influence on the moral zeitgeist to further make such activity less acceptable, but ultimately, it was demand for such regulation that caused the change, not the regulation itself.

I agree and don't want such a power to exist, and I understand the concern that without a 'legitimate' monopolistic body (government), a business entity may gain enough power to become as evil a force as a totalitarian government. In fact, this was exactly the argument Ayn Rand used to express why she was not an anarchist (she saw two large interests becoming 'competeing governments'), similar to prominent minarchist Robert Nozick's beliefs that a natural monopoly would become as powerful and potentially tyrannical as a government.

These competing viewpoints are the basic break between minarchist and anarchist libertarians, and I considered myself a minarchist for quite some time before making this determination:

Government has historically, almost always ruled monopolistically over a given geographic area (exceptions being medieval Iceland and Ireland). It has also always grown, without exception (that I've seen). Major social revolution, often violent, represents the only instances in which government is reshaped, whether larger or smaller, but even from that point, the growth process has started over again. The reason being (in my non-doctorate opinion) that government is self-sustaining. It does not need to please its customers because it holds the geographic monopoly on violence. It only need not anger them enough to disrecognize them as their masters. Thus, it's legitimacy is its strength.

Businesses must work much harded to maintain legitimacy because they do not hold a geographic monopoly. Anytime you have a dispute with a business, the phrase which gets you almost anything you want is, "I'm considering taking my business elsewhere". You can't use this phrase in court, or with cops, or any other bureaucrats, because how they treat you is no worry of theirs (to a degree, ie, the revolution thing).

Because people are violent, a violent organization is required to quell such violence (Ie, police force is necessary to prevent a dude from robbing a stores without resistance). On the non-violent side, what's to prevent people from negging on contracts? Such action is non-violent, for example, if you gave me $1000 for a car, and I never give you the car, you have a legitimate claim against me. I haven't attacked you, but if I refuse to pay, I still remain obligated to you.

This then shifts into a discussion on the practicality of private arbitration, which is a matter I will not claim to be an expert in...the best I could do is recommend some books that give a framework on how a voluntary society would deal with coercion and fraud. Though I can say that the market principles of 'where there is demand, there will be supply' also applies here. If we (society) all want a court system, police, etc, the market has presented an opportunity for such to be sold. Then people say, "well, then cops won't take calls of people being attacked who haven't paid for their services!"...which has the potential to be true, but only if such services are the type that the public would demand. If the market wants help-now, pay-later services, there is nothing preventing them from existing.

It's probably much harder for me to introduce people to market-alternatives because I am by my own aknowledgement, a radical. I don't believe in any government. A small govenrment libertarian (minarchist) would probably be an easier person to have such a conversation with because they'll agree that there is a utility in government, and can thus avoid the complicated discussions on free-market arbitration and roads, protection, etc.

Haha, fortunately not.

I'm 100% there, that criminals should be punished. If a bank is fraudulent with its customers, if it refuses payment on a promised loan, or pension, etc, I believe it liable, and I believe it appropriate to forcibly seize their assets to pay the promised amount, plus damages as determined by a legitimate third-party arbitration. What I'm not in favor of is making a certain type of business a crime. Putting it simply, if I want to do business with a high risk bank, should force be used to stop either me or the bank from signing such a contract?

Since we both agree that an organized body should be capable of punishing force or fraud, I understand the burden of proof is on me to explain how a system contrary to the current one would be capable of doing that. I'm trying to start from the conscientious objection and build from there.

Well that all depends on what you mean by anti-social. I would say that when a person commits a crime against another, that is an anti-social act. If the government prevents this from happening, then it could be considered pro-social.

The government cannot prevent assholes from being asshole, this is why I believe we need a government, to protect the potential victims of assholes. I've already given you an example of how this works- the arrest of Bernard Madoff. Certainly the goverment dropped the ball and could have stopped him much earlier, but the fact remains that if it wasn't for the government, Madoff and many like him would still be out there defrauding investors. Now it's up to you to explain how a completely deregulated economy would offer any protection from this type of fraud.

You didn't answer my question, you just invited me to rephrase it. All this talk about the nature of freedom is empty retoric, you've simply set up a strawman of my viewpoint. For what it matters I believe human rights to be inherent, not granted by government, but it is the role of government to protect those rights, that is to prevent them from being violated as best it can. I think that our current political system protects the rights of the general population to a much greater degree than any previous system. It's still far from perfect, there are rights which I believe we possess (such as the right to die) which are not protected, but I think we're getting there. There are other rights (such as the right to criticise religion) that some people are trying to oppose, and I think we need to act to prevent this.

My question was how a deregulated system would protect the rights of free press from violation, and maintain its impartiality. There would be no reason for businesses to offer any sort of transparency, there would be nothing to prevent those businesses from publically lying, or paying others to lie about them, there would be nothing stopping them from slandering others, there would be nothing stopping them from harrassing people who do oppose them.

How? How do you gain adequate assurance that each company you deal with every day isn't engaging in unsavoury practises? When companies can completely hide their operations, lie about themselves and others and harrass or persecute opposition how do choose which companies obey your moral code?

So I take it that you agree that scum rises to the top in business as well? Like I said earlier, scum rises to the top, full stop. Those who are willing to cross moral-boundaries that others are unwilling to cross will gain an advantage in whatever field they are in. This is why I advocate a multi-componant system- involving government, business, press, sciences and arts- with each componant watching the other in order to keep the general population well enough informed that it shouldn't have to elevate to a messy revolution.

Fine, show another alternative. Based on the questions I've asked you above, describe how an alternative system might function.

Coercive interference into the normal processes of society is anti-social. Whether there is a benefit from such coercion was not my point.

We need...that's a trigger-phrase for me...nevermind.

So he committed fraud and then the gov't acted? Far out, so they stopped an asshole from continuing to be an asshole. You have not presented how they could have prevented this other than "Certainly the goverment dropped the ball and could have stopped him much earlier..." If earlier he had not used force or fraud, it would have been immoral to stop him from doing anything.

How to deal with coercion in the free market is complicated, and I'm stretching if I do much more than recommend books. But what I would like to address is if government-enforced regulation makes the market any more preferrable. If this guy already comitted crime, therein lies the aggression.

Which one didn't I answer? Where would the protections be? I answered it by saying, 'protections are not grants from government, they are inherent'.

How so? It's not rhetoric if we're defining two seperate problems. You said the press freedom would disappear, or at least not be protected in the free market, and I feel this requires some explanation. That I don't see it disapearing is not rhetoric.

From where does gov't derive such authority? (From here, it gets very philosophically complex...social contract, all that garb)

Perhaps...but that doesn't make it the best in that it is not the worst.

You can commit suicide in most states, you just can't make a failed attempt.

Any violations of rights must be opposed.

The primary question would be then, without government, who's going to violate those rights? If it's biased, you don't have to buy it, thus, consumer share in the market would prefer (mostly) impartial news.

Sounds more like government than business...

If they want your dollar, they have to compete for it. If you don't want liars' products, don't buy from them. If you want to know who the liar's are, subscribe to an impartial consumer report.

For all problems presented in the free market exist a profitable solution. And not all of them even cost the consumer. For example, consumer reports could pay for themselves with advertising, remaining free to the subscriber, aiding the businesses who purchase ads, and providing a living for the person producing the publication. Market-solutions aid all involved, government solutions are inherently one-size-fits-all and only destruct natural market activity.

If there is a demand for transparency, then sell your business on its transparency. You don't need the guns of government to make people honest.

I don't believe that. I'm not saying never, but bad business is more the exception than the rule. Again, they're in competition, so they don't have a license to do whatever they want.

What prevents this from being, as it sounds like, a concentration of absolute power?

Here's my favorites:

"The Market for Liberty" in pdf and audiobook format here:
http://freekeene.com/free-audiobook/
you can find a hard copy on amazon, but it's out of print and a little pricey.

For a less philosophical perspective:
"The Machinery of Freedom"
http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/0812...

And there's tons of stuff written by Murray Rothbard, historian and economist, on the practicalities and structure of a voluntaryist/anarcho-capitalist society, but I haven't read much of it yet so can't personally recommend it. His speeches on youtube are worth watching.

You've missed my point. If you read the paragraph that you quoted you'll notice that I began by saying that the government cannot prevent assholes from being assholes. I'm not trying to show how the government might have prevented the whole affair but how, when an asshole does graduate and become a criminal, the government can act to derail a career criminal to protect potential future victims.

Now you need to explain how this might have been achieved in a free market, and keep our ongoing discussion on the media in mind. If, on the other hand, you think that a free market would actually prevent someone from starting a Ponzi scheme you ought to explain how. Stretch if you have to.

You seem to be getting confused, it might help if you responded to a complete paragraph, rather than dividing it up into componant sentences. You did not say that protections are inherent, you said that rights were inherent, to which I agreed. You also said that rights can be violated, so I rephrased my question to ask how these violations would be prevented, this is what I mean when I say 'protect those rights'.

When, say a newspaper, lies the government can intervene. It can force the paper to print a retraction, pay a fine or shut down. If a journalist were being harrassed, the government can act to prevent this opression. These are the 'protections' which I refer to, and clearly they are not inherent to society. If they were to exist in a free market then they would have to come from somewhere, someone would have to provide them. This is what I'm asking you to explain, who would prevent a newspaper from lying and how.

You seem to assume that people can always tell when someone is lying. That they can tell the difference between true transparency and the dishonest appearence of transparency. That there's an easily discernable difference between a justified preference and an unfair bias.

Businesses have more than enough motive to lie. If you don't want a company from doing X, in order to win your patronage it certainly could simply stop doing X, alternatively it could lie to make it appear as if it doesn't do X. If X is very profitable it would probably be cheaper to lie, and without regulations there would be nothing to stop them.

Take your example of consumer reports, you say that they would be paid for by advertising, but a company would be much more likely to buy up advertising space near a consumer report which is favourable to them or disfavourable to their competition. This would allow biased or even fabricated reports to get published, and a lot of people would have no means of distinguishing them from real consumer reports.

I could ask the same question about everything that you're postulating.

Then we agree. You can make it unprofitable to be bad, but there's no way to have total control over such.

Which I support 100%. Reprimanding criminals.

Entire books have been written on such an issue. Do you want me to lay out entirely how free market reputation systems would work, credit, etc? If we agree that bad behavior cannot be prevented, but only responded to, why aren't you asking me for the details of how private arbitration would work, since arbitration would be the response to fraudulent contracting. I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at.

How would that change anything? I do read them all at once then respond point by point.

Correct

I thought we agreed that prevention is never guaranteed? What I can lay out for you is the framework of response if you like (private arbitration, similar to the modern court system, only better).

Prevention of problems RE: consumer reports addressed later.

So you're a fan of censorship?

It's a beautiful thing when a newspaper lies, it's an indicator of what you can trust and what you can't. Don't buy/read/subscribe to shitty newspapers. Problem solved.

Like they did in Soviet Russia, where free speech was a 'bourgeois superstition'? I don't trust a free press without reason, but I never trust a gov't press for any reason.

Why must the government do this? I have a solution, write a story about the harassment. Exposing bad stuff is also a beautiful thing. It kills the bad stuff.

Stefan Molyneux has a great analogy thingy about the paradox of fighting evil. It is physically impossible to fight evil, because once you identify something as evil, it loses its legitimacy and disintegrates. So you don't fight evil, you struggle to identify it, to shine a light on it. And that is how you destroy it. Someone haranguing a journalist? Write a story about it. The mob stealing from everyone? Expose them all. Let it be known that these people who are treated like kings are common criminals. Watch as their empire crumbles and they are ostricized.

Competition. Your newspaper lies, mine doesn't. I expose your lie, nobody wants to read your paper, nobody buys it, your market share atrophies, and the truth prevails.

Okay, then I turn the question to you...if something is unknown, how would Lord and Savior government know that they're lying and be able to fly in and save the day?

Regulations are unnecessary if I don't want to do business with a company doing X. I just won't do business with them. If they lie about their business dealings, then no way am I doin business with them.

You're ignoring the fact that reputation in business is huge...it's the corporate equivalent of an individual's credit score. Would you loan money to someone who has a habit of never paying back loans? Conversely, would you do business with a company that has a history of embezzeling funds?

In this instance, you're ignoring the reputation of the consumer report. They are sold on how reliable they are. Competition forces them to be more reliable than their rivals. Thus, a constant dialectic struggle to be the best produces the best.

And again, how would Almighty Gov know when to superman in anyways?

But you can't, because I never suggested concentrating power. Government is a coercive monopoly by definition. This is what you are advocating for. I'm advocating a competitive free market, where only natural monopoly could be established ("The Machinery of Freedom" by David Friedman covers the differing types of monopoly, natural monopoly being only a business no one has objection to. It cannot hold its monopoly status if it begins to abuse its place on the economic chain).

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You obviously have a lot of faith in the power of reputation to regulate a free market and right its wrongs, faith which I don't share. It might well work on a relatively small scale, such as within the informal sectors that you mentioned above, but I don't think it would work in a more complicated economy. People have to deal with hundreds of individual companies, sometimes it's hard to know what corporations or individuals they might belong to and it's often very difficult to know who supplies the companies that you deal with. What's more is that wealthy individuals and companies have a massive power over the media and are able to greatly influence their own reputation. I think this makes a reputation-based system unworkable.

What's more is that wealth won't always be on the side of the party that wants to know the truth, and that's what it comes down to. Presumably in an free market if someone who believed that they'd been harmed or cheated faced stonewalling by the (potentially) offending company they would need to resort to some sort of force to obtain proof of the misjustice, but if they have less wealth than the company then they're at dead-end. Demand isn't measured in people, it's measured in money, so if there is demand for a powerful company which protects the secrets of the ultra-rich, then such a company would arise.

As for your idea that evil withers when exposed, I think that's patently false. It ignores (for instance) countless mafia-style organisation around the world. Knowledge of their evil only causes fear, which increases their power.