"Free Market Uber Alles" and its consequences have been a disaster for the Western World.
The party came first, the hangover came later. The establishment advice ("Hair of the dog! Keep drinking! Keep drinking more!") is likely to cause... health issues.
But seriously, the benefits were very real. You can see this across the board: the British supremacy was ultimately built on an early pivot towards free trade, with Adam Smith basically being the prophet of the cause. It
was good. It created immense wealth, and it helped lift people out of poverty by providing a vast array of opportunities. Wich is why Gladstone (champion of free trade) was "the People's William".
But as you grow richer, cost of living increases, and thus cost of labour. That can be kept down by importing more workers ("
Higher wages? Take a hike, I can hire three immigrants in your stead!") or offshoring jobs to cheaper countries. At which point free trade stops being beneficial to the masses in the developed world. That's the hangover. You make yourself rich, and then find you've priced yourself out of the global market.
Two solutions:
1) Fuck the workers, basically let Darwinism run its course, and ultimately, the flood of immigrants will "even things out". Wages eveywhere will be roughly the same, cost of living everywhere will be roughly the same, quality of life eveywhere will be roughly the same. This means the entire world will look somewhat like India. (Including an upper caste of ultra-rich plutocrats and vast teeming masses of vaguely brown colour.) The West, having previously been on top, will be the big loser. Economically, it's "logical", and for the anti-white Left, it's "justice". But for ordinary Westerners, it's simply... extinction.
2) Turn the West into a "closed system", on the basis that only nations that are equally developed (and have equal costs of living) can interact equally. So close the borders, and accept only imports of raw materials from the rest of the world. (At its most cynical: send in the marines when any other country gets too uppity, or even introduce neo-colonialism.)
I argue for the second option, and for a variety of reasons I've often talked about elsewhere, I also expect that path to ultimately be chosen. You can have absolute free trade, and even basically "domestic libertarianism"
within the proposed Western world-system. In fact, I argue that we should. Because within that closed system, there will be rough socio-economic parity, so that the problem discussed above doesn't become an issue.
How is anything the free markets fault?
I'd say big business joining forces with government to crush small businesses and anyone that disagrees politically is far worse. It's given us corrupt mega corps and corrupt governments.
What's it called? Crony capitalism?
Where they join forces to stop any attempts to compete and target people they hate.
I believe my above response to
@Lord Sovereign goes into the core issue.
The problem you describe also exists, and we must solve it. As I said: I'm in favour of free trade (and, indeed, something that much resembles libertarianism) within the Western world-system. In fact, closing off the West in the manner I've proposed would go a long way to breaking the power of the megacorps that
rely on the mechanisms I've outlined above.
Note also that when I say "the West", my definition is rather broad. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Israel could fit into this sphere. But as I've argued elsewhere: China presently exploits the global disparity at the expense of the West, but is already losing the advantage, and will eventually conclude that a set-up as I've described is also in
their interest. Therefore, expect a Chinese world-system to exist side-by-side with the Western one, with only minimal interaction between the two. Depending on how things play out, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan may thus fall into the Chinese sphere.
But I don't just single out those points, and just... act as if the rest of the post doesn't exist. That's extremely rude, and drags any discussion into a very negative focus.
