The first and perhaps most important thing to understand about markets is that they do not occur naturally. They are not the default state of human affairs that governments and regulations disturb. Markets require an institutional infrastructure that only collective action, usually through the state, can provide.
That propensity to truck and barter predates our own species. We find tool making flints hundreds and hundreds of miles from their source. We find it in other species even – funghi have markets trading elements with tree roots.
Oh, that markets might work better with a bit of regulation could be true. But markets predate homo sapiens let alone government.
The first and perhaps most important thing to understand about markets is that they do not occur naturally.
oh yes they do.
Behind you!
Where’s your career?
Where’s your carer, surely…
Is there some British English definition of ‘require’ that Gamecock doesn’t know?
No
They occur in prisons despite the state.
They occur in primary school playgrounds.
I could do a ninthly, but candidly I’m not a genius professor
For fuck’s sake, the stupid cunt is selling his own wares in a fucking market. Sign up for my YouTube. Read my blog. Buy my books. Pay me for my services. Or don’t, the choice is yours.
Ah. I can see how he might be more successful if the market approach were abandoned and people were forced to consume his bollocks via state enforcement.
H.Sap. traded well before there was any form of Government. This includes our Neanderthal cousins.
There’s also sufficient archeological evidence to *suggest* our forebears and actually the biologically most successful Cousin/Ancestor of us, Homo Erectus, did trade on occasion.
Those stone tools 100’s of miles from their origin rock and all of the right age…
This alone invalidates the Solanum Professorii’s statement.
But it goes even deeper….
The very act of meiotic DNA exchange to produce offspring is a deliberate “market” mechanism to enable “Profit” in the form of genetic stability while at the same time increasing variety to better withstand an instable environment.
Even plasmid transfer amongst bacteria can be seen as a “market” between a virus and its host organism to provide better survival chances for both..
And last time I checked, single-celled organisms do not have something like “Government”…
In fact, it seems that “Market Forces” are baked right into the very make-up of Lifeâ„¢…
“meiotic DNA exchange” – neanderthal meat markets must have been a sight to behold.
Wellll… I *was* trying to keep things technical , but if you *insist* on digging up the transactional nature of sexual favours throughout quite large tracts of Nature…… especially warm-blooded animals… 😉
He’ll think something different tomorrow, easy when you don’t examine your own assertions.
But anyway, show us where it has already been done before we commit to copying this wonderful collectivism thing.
Russia 1917-1991
Hmmm, let me think..
Cambodia 1975-1979.
In order to function, a market requires confidence : trust in the other party, belief that the goods are priced right and are in working order and that the specie exchanged is valid.
In a place where everyone is a crook, it might need the Rule of Law to be imposed or enforced.
Markets exist within prisons where everyone is, by definition, a crook. Game theory works and there are more ways to impose ‘rule of law’ than a government.
The critical attribute of government is a monopoly on violence. Before government the violence was handled directly by they parties involved.
Exactly.
Genial Harry Grout will see to a fair set of conditions.
One of the issues with unregulated markets is that monopolies flourish and people are forced to buy from the same untrustworthy sole supplier.
You know, like water companies and the BBC
You are entirely correct. Proper criminal tend to be the most honest people you’ll come across. Their “word” is the most valuable thing & not keeping it can have serious consequences.
I am not even sure confidence or violence is needed. An ‘anarchic’ market is still one where the participants are voluntary. If you keep defecting then you get a reputation for that and people stop trading with you.
No government, no ‘rule of law’, no violence.
It’s multiple levels of bollocks. It starts out as a proof by assertion that only states can build infrastructure, which is wrong. Then we get to the naturalistic fallacy, which is a fallacy for a reason. And even if it wasn’t multiply wrong it wouldn’t mean anything anyway.
Whoever made this guy a fake professor should be dismissed from academia.
I would symbolically close Sheffield University on those grounds – or at the very least temporarily remove their ability to issue degrees pending public recognition of their mistake.
I think there is some reification fallacy, too. He treats ‘markets’ as if they are concrete.
“Markets require an institutional infrastructure that only collective action, usually through the state, can provide.”
And yet, there are lots of weed dealers. Not much infrastructure, not much state involvement, not much regulation.
Not being a fan of it, I’m assuming things here, but it works as a market. Someone rips you off, you don’t go back to them. Someone gives you a toke and it’s some really good gear, you ask your buddy for the name of his dealer. That’s what us winos do. Just replace with “glass”, “full-bodied red” and “wine merchant”.
Yes you’d have thought the existence of the drugs trade, which thrives despite the active efforts of the State to eliminate it might have just given El Spuddo a slight hint that in fact trading is pretty much baked into human DNA.
More grist to my mill that no one can be this stupid and still be able to walk and talk, and that its all an act, designed to make money from the gullible.
I can’t add much beyond the great Martin Near the M25 (give us a clue – East, West?)
The wider piece itself – It’s reminiscent of my undergraduate essays if I was up against a time deadline and had drinking commitments elsewhere. Create either a straw man or another false dichotomy and tailor your evidence to fit it. Fail to consider alternative historiography (I don’t think ‘trolling’ was a term in the 90s) and rely on strident assertion of your own self-declared excellence to ‘bully’ through the argument. Made for some entertaining supervisions but rarely got more than a borderline 2:1/2:2.
For a self-declared authority to produce it in his eighth decade is a combination of embarrassing and depressing that he has such a lofty view of his own capabilities vs. the mediocre (And I’m probably being generous) reality.
Edge of North London.Hopefully not for that much longer.
It isn’t just that markets predate human institutions as explained here, it’s that a market cannot be cancelled no matter what you do. A market will always exist. It will overcome any conditions trying to stop it. It’s an inherent part of the law of supply and demand which can’t be repealed by any authority. What idiot would try?
Oh, plenty have. Lenin for one. Spud wishes to, for another.
Are we to assume Spud deciding everything is natural, if markets are not? The Divine Right of Kings, perchance?
Ha several moons ago i went to a lovely market town in Ireland. There was an old board there listing the permitted weights and measures things were to be sold in (n.b. Richard not prices!). It also designated that English to be spoken. Our guide, naturally enough i suppose, gave this a nationalist anti colonialist slant. “We were not allowed to speak our own language.” It was all i could to keep in… yeah but might have made the administration of the market easier and therefore better for all concerned. .
Don;’t forget he has an Irish passport to deal with the ‘disaster’ that was Brexit. He has alsosuffered more than many – being the only person to contract COVID 19 19 times and survive, despite the Johnson and Sunak administrations targeting him for involuntary manslaughter by not locking the country down hard or long enough.
You should have asked “What, just like in your Church?”
I mean the history of the UK is littered with ‘market towns’. Spud literally lives in one – Ely has a charter market dating back 800 years. Downham Market (the clue is in the name) where he used to live has had a charter market since 1046. This isn’t stupidity or ignorance, its design.
No doubt his position is that if it doesn’t fit his model it can’t be a real market….. Thus making him always right despite all the evidence to the contrary.
He thinks government predates markets? Really? *Really?*
Exchanges of value happen with *animals*.
Totally off topic.
I’ve just been trying to create a simple text file on an Android phone. The idea being I can send it to someone & they can have it on their home screen for easy access. Why is something so simple so fucking difficult? I’ve eventually manages to create it in Doc & send it. But there seems to nothing on their Samsung that allows it to be read & importantly copied. I would have thought this was a basic function of a phone FFS!
Meanwhile back to the topic.
It is difficult to decide if this Spud guy is terminally ignorant or terminally stupid. Sometimes he completely excels himself. This is one of those times..
Embrace the power of “and”.