Can anyone share references to specific times or places in which truly free markets have existed, American or otherwise?
Thanks!
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say the answer is that "truly" free markets have never existed on any significant scale for any significant period of time.
Thanks.
The question comes as a result of a debate with a friend, who argues that if truly free markets were so great, why have they never existed before?
This - to me - isn't a very valuable question to ask. A better question is what societies have applied truly free market principals - at any scale - and what were the results?
Some good resources here: http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/History%20Limited.htm but I'm still looking
Well yea if you're looking for examples of very free markets then you should look at 19th century America, Britain from about 1780-1880, and modern day Hong-Kong. The fact is that truly free markets have never existed (although the term itself is rather vague since plenty of people disagree on what exactly the term means. Some would argue it would necessitate the eradication of all governments) because even in the freest examples of markets like in America during the 1800's there was still a high amount of government spending on things like the military and massive interventions often dealing with tariffs.
At any rate, you're perfectly right that you're friend is asking a stupid question, all questions like that are. It's like if you had gone up to a friend in the 1700's and asked "If society in the absence of a landed aristocracy is so great, why has it never existed before?" It just allows them to avoid dealing on theory and instead deal with bullshit history.
by free market, do we mean a global free market or little free markets somehow independant on the actions of people around the globe?
Hong Kong and Singapore are pretty close at present. There's been plenty of examples of free societies, e.g. Athens in ancient Greece before it went on its conquering spree, early Rome, medieval Ireland (probably the most long lived), early medieval English common law, the Merchant Law, medieval Iceland, many of the merchant city-states of medieval Europe, Moresnet (recent Mises article on this one) etc. Many of these are probably more free market than were industrial age USA/Britain/Germany. Sweden was pretty capitalist in its heyday.
You can also look at the failure of the state in countries like South Africa (and Norway - yes, Norway) to provide policing as partial instances of markets beginning to operate. In South Africa, for instance, many whites rely heavily on private security forces, as the police are notoriously corrupt and useless. In Norway I've read articles intimating pretty much the same thing. Markets are working everywhere, all the time, even when a state tries to stop them. You can usually look at partial examples of free markets at work because different countries allow it to differing degrees in different areas. The modern USA isn't a good example of it, and nor is the UK. Both are held up as ideal capitalist states, but that is only because of their bloated financial sectors, which are equated with capitalism. I can't think of a more extensively socialist and corrupted sector of the economy, however. Perhaps medicine? Education? The military? Funny how these are the most rife with corruption
It doesn't matter, anyway. Statism has failed to provide solutions for mankind's problems for 10,000 years and more. It is time it died and people were allowed to experiment, irrespective of whether an absolutely free market order has existed. And states are en route to collapsing, so it isn't a question of "if" anymore but "when".
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Byzantine Empire ruled by Anastasius I, Medieval Ireland, Medieval Iceland, the fairs of Champagne in the Middle Ages, early Rhode Island, early Pennsylvania... Nowadays: some private islands wholly owned by a private citizen or corporation.
if you're looking for examples of very free markets then you should look at 19th century America
I have somwe articles related to this, but the website on which they are appears to be down.
Even the 'laissez faire' periods in America and the UK were defined by two very important categories of state intervention: banking and land. In one of England's legislations they seized something like 20% of the land owned at the time. Similar actions apply to the US, especially in mining situations. And then there was the Bubble Act in England which gave the state licensing power and more over banks and the National Banking Act in the Civil War which made all banks pyramid their own paper on top of Wall Street ones, enabling a greater degree of coordinated inflation and expanding Wall Street Bank reserves.
Then there was the tariffing, patenting and railroad subsidy in the US. In the UK, one should know that there was a system of organizing labor which was enacted by the English state, wherein it one had to apply for permission to move to a different workhouse (because the poor were assigned workhouses), and very difficultly so. Kevin Carson calls this the prohibition of 'voting with one's feet'.
Much of the politics of 'laissez-faire' era capitalism were an imposed lengthening of the structure of production, or in other words, capitalism at the expense of the poor in favor of the rich. However beneficial this may be in the long run, it ought to up to those participating in the economy to decide. Not the person picking their pocket.
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
The website is finally up. Here are the links:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/the-gilded-age-a-modest-revision/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/no-laissez-faire-there/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-robber-barons-and-the-real-gilded-age/
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/the-many-monopolies/