Perhaps why you think so little about Free Market thought is because you apparently don’t understand any of it. Alan Greenspan, no matter how much he might have claimed, was not a ‘free market’ guy by any stretch! Jeez, he headed up the most ‘anti-market’ institution in the country(world?) and wielded so many grand and extra-market powers that probably made his head swell. Secondly, regarding ‘gold’ as a currency. You need to understand what money is and how it functions before making offhand comments or dismissals. Ron Paul advocates market competition with fiat (Federal Reserve) money, and he does not advocate ‘forcing’ of gold, or any other commodity as a money standard. He does realize that gold has historically been chosen most often and most successfully as a money by the market, and feels it will be again, but that is much different than what you claim he says. Also, your comment about gold being ‘impossible now that there is more money in the American economy than there is gold to represent it’ really shows your lack of knowledge: you are thinking that the ratio of dollars to gold is some sort of ‘set in stone’ value – it is not, as can easily be seen by how cheap the dollar has become to purchase with gold… see the perspective? There is no ‘invisible hand’ – just the millions and billions of hands of people involved in the market and helping to direct it to allocate resources and labor to the most efficient use, as determined by those same people. The only reason that markets are ‘fallible’ is because humans are fallible – and this fact stays true even in the face of religious awe of governmental power, as if those in government have some ‘higher knowledge’ than all the rest of the ‘little people’. Sorry, a study in the human nature (see: Wiki Public Choice Theory) with the political sphere shows that those attracted to government are NOT the ‘cream of the crop’, but rather reflect a higher degree of self-interested behavior and desire to wield power over others… You can have your czars and emperors, just leave me out of the inevitable mess!
I do congratulate you on at least one thing, you brought up the term Corporatism. That is EXACTLY what we have now, not capitalism. Corporatism occurs when a minimalist government (like we had) starts assuming more and more socialistic powers (as we did/do) and groups of folks (corporations, ‘special interests’, etc) discover that it is easier to manipulate those in power at governmental levels to make laws which favor them, instead of playing in the rough & tumble world of Free markets and competition. Whats easier, paying of a few key officials, or taking large, expensive risks going head to head with innovators and entrepreneurs?

Your ‘unregulated’ markets are nothing of the sort, they were still gamed by government and had arbitrary regulatory structures in place that almost guaranteed the negative outcomes you like to point to as ‘free market failures’ – they are all, each and every one, more influenced by government failure than anything the market brought to bear.

I was getting really angry at your article because it shows how little you know. To say that Alan Greenspan and Ron Paul have the same viewpoints is utterly ridiculous. Alan Greenspan is no free marketeer.

I felt I had to write a response, so I looked up at your masthead to see who wrote this article and started laughing. You motto of “news and nonsense spiced with nerve” told me the whole story.

You have written a bunch of nonsense and tried to disguise it as news!

I was going to write out a long paragraph pointing out this author’s ignorance on just about everything he wrote in his “news” article, but you fine gentlemen took the words right out of my mouth. Well done.

I completely agree with this article, and for all you calling the writer ignorant, you seem to be the ignorant ones not realizing this is an opinion piece – not as a news article as you snidely try to claim.

@FlavorFlav…. That’s the problem. It’s an obvious opinion piece there’s no disputing that because he offers little shred of evidence that it was a persuasion or informative piece. The problem comes into play when this website’s main motto claims to be bringing you the “news”.

Dude, the article is in the opinion section, you know the ones newspapers tend to have.

Imagine Borat writing an article about American culture. This is about the level of analysis that you’ve brought to the subject of free market economics.

Before you write about it again, I suggest you learn a little bit about it first. You could start with Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat, and Capitalism by George Reisman.

Until then, please understand that you’re coming across like a know-it-all teenager lecturing adults on a subject you don’t understand.

JAdam Smith did not use the metaphor of “an invisible hand” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) to “illustrate the point market forces, not government, should be used to allocate resources within society”. He did not even mention “market forces” nor “government” (See Moral Sentiments, Part 4, Chapter 2).

He was discussing how “proud” and “unfeeling” feudal landlords, basking in their self-important greatness, were obliged to feed their retainers (thugs) and their downtrodden serfs and their families from some of the produce of their land and they were “led by an invisible hand”, unintentionally, to enable the survival of the population and, through their “progeny”, to generate a growing population. They had no choice but to maintain the subsistence of their serfs because without subsistence, who would plant the crops and harvest them?

No markets are mentioned, nothing about “capitalism’, and nothing (not a word) about “government”, nor its roles. James Tatum has not read, nor understood, Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.

We haven’t had a free market in 100 yrs. Does anyone think that what we have now is working?? Is that working out for everyone? I think we should go back to a free market economy because what we have now just isn’t working out..

Sure this is just an opinions column. But the writer has based his opinions on the popular rhetoric of the liberal establishment.

Comparing Ron Paul to Glenn Beck and Greenspan proves the writer doesn’t understand economics or he doesn’t care to. Either way the writer got it wrong, so wrong.

When I used to write for the Echo I did a lot more research and reading before I wrote a column, and I sure didn’t base my opinions on rhetorical nonsense.

Gold is the ultimate regulator… you can’t create gold out of thin air like you can those rags we use now.. that would put a stop to a lot of the bs coming out of wall street and the banks..

Dear George,
Gold will never come back as a form of currency for two reasons. First, the value of gold is so out of whack that you could not mint it in face value coins. Second, there isn’t enough gold in the world to meet the demand for the number of transactions that would occur, or flood the market for gold to bring it back to reasonable levels of value.

Gavin Kennedy, you are absolutely wrong. Adam Smith uses the term “the invisible hand” exactly how the writer says. The term not only appears in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” but also in “The Wealth of Nations.”

Gavin Kennedy is absolutely correct about Adam Smith. Both Moral Sentiments and Wealth are online so you can check out what Smith actually says for yourself:
http://www.econlib.org/library/classicsauS.html#smith
Search for Invisible Hand.

The metaphor of the invisible hand appears only once is each book and is used differently in each instance. In Moral Sentiments it is used in a discussion of feudal landlords, as Kennedy stated above. In Wealth it is used in a discussion of a preference in domestic over foreign investment. Contrary to popular opinion there is no theory of the invisible hand in any of Smith’s works.

As far as banking goes, if Tatum—or Greenspan and his various cronies for that matter—had actually bothered to read Wealth of Nations they would have discovered that Smith was in favor of certain banking regulations. In the large section on banking and money Smith has this to say about “private people receiving in payment the promissory notes of a banker”: “But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical.”

We have not had a free market for as long as I can remember. Highly regulated markets, crony capitalism, and government subsidies have made us broke and insolvent. The honorable Ron Paul knows exactly what he is talking about.

And Smith wasn’t an economist. He was a moral philosopher. He has, however, suffered much abuse at the hands of people who call themselves economists.