Political Memes

Milton Friedman, basically the modern godfather of globalist, neoliberal capitalism... aka, the 'Chicago School' of economics, strongly rejected both Marx and Keynes.

Also, pioneered the shock doctrine of massive austerity, union crackdowns and removal of workers rights for the greater population of Chile, by personally advising and greatly influencing the economic policies of Augusto Pinichet, who had just come into power after executing a very violent and bloody right-wing, military junta style coup.

Oh, and Friedman's underlying monetary theory he uses as the basis for his understanding of economics has been pretty much thoroughly refuted, but all the idiot 'free market' conservatives or turbolibs (cough they have almost no differences economically cough) you've ever met who tell you that you are the one who doesn't understand economics ... well they haven't read any of those thorough and well evidenced refutations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Just uh, ctrl+f 'criticism of published works' and you can see that basically every kind of economist from all kinds of different economic schools and political ideologies, US economists, non-US economists, have criticized Friedman at essentially every single point of his theory.

...

EDIT:

Wait, no, fuck, that's not Friedman, that's a different right wing ghoul economist, damnit!

Sorry, I do literally get them confused.

This is Murray Rothbard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

Even more right wing and more bonkers, belonging to the 'anarcho capitalist' Austrian School of economics.

I am so tired, so very tired.

Rothbard was a foundational figure of both the CATO and Mises Institutes, who are somehow even more extremist in their advocacy of no holds barred, free market competition than Friedman, yet they largely fail to have any kind of useful solution to the problem of ... a free market, in capitalism, always tends toward oligopoly and monopoly over time... but they hate the idea of something like an anti trust law that would prevent this, because government bad... but also the mythical perfectly comepetive free market is good and desirable... they just... won't actually advocate anything that could possibly maintain even a semblance of what they claim to love.

(Anarcho Capitalism is extremely confusing in the sense of it not making any practical sense in the vast majority of real world economic cases, it seems mostly to just exist a a sort of self fulfilling virtue signalling ideology?)

The Austrian School also has a very, very strange philosophical basis in what they call 'praxeology', which more or less eschews using actual empirical data and falsifiable theories to understand economics, and instead focuses on using word games to define their economic worldview into existence, and also deride all others as 'internally contradictory'.

...

For whatever reason, a lot of right wing US based economists not only happen to be old bald dudes with glasses... but they love bowties.

Thats probably why Tucker Carlson used to wear one back in the late 90s / early 00s, before Jon Stewart roasted him so badly, on his own show, that I don't think Tucker has worn a bowtie since.

Murray Rothbard

Europe's markets generally more resemble 'free markets' (which really means: competetive markets) because they are more heavily and properly regulated.

So, they're more like 'fair markets' than they are 'free markets'.

You cannot naturally maintain competetive markets over time without some kind of system for counteracting the natural tendency of such markets to consolidate over time.

'Free markets' don't exist, as that phrase is an intentionally vague and confusing propaganda term, that means whatever to uneducated and naive person wants it to mean.

Are they free as in free beer, free lunch?

Are they free as in, free to enter, free to leave?

'Free' is a word that has many different, distinct meanings, and it is a hallmark of con artists and cult leaders to use such words and switch from one definition/meaning of the same word, from sentence to sentence, sometimes even within the same sentence.

Look at how quantum mystic type gurus use 'energy' to waffle between and conflate the actual, physics definition of 'energy' and the colloquial 'overall emotional disposition' meaning of 'energy'.

Its the same thing with 'free market' peddlers.

Must be a genetic component to it,

Oof.

we can’t seem to help ourselves.

Who is "we"?

No, that's completely meaningless as a working definition, and also just broadly false.

Monopolistic companies often rank high in public polls of 'most hated / least trusted' companies.

Monopolies are more accurately described as using and abusing trust, by building up a reputation, and then betraying that trusted reputation once they've grown to become actual monopolies.

Enshittification can basically be described as the latter half of that process.

Its a slow motion bait and switch.

According to ancaps, unironically yes, rofl