Also, what is the proposed remedy for a CEO making much more than his workers? Should the government tell companies and business owners how much they are allowed to pay their employees (and themselves)? Imagine a small business owner, who busted her ass for years to make her business successful. After years of hard work, she is finally able to hire some low-skilled laborers for some low-skilled tasks, and she pays them $8.00 an hour. She makes $300,000 in a year from her business. The owner makes almost 19 times the amount of money her laborers each make individually! Why doesn’t she deserve it again?

Finally, one of the more subtle points of people like Milton Friedman is that free-market capitalism isn’t a perfect system, but its the best option in the real world (the non-perfect world). I believe that we should judge our policies by their actual consequences, not by their intentions. If you accept this philosophy, you will find yourself on the economist’s side most of the time.

It is also very interesting to note that every single thing that the economists suggested with the exception of raising the retirement age has already been implemented by the Swedes. They have eliminated and substantially reduced most tariffs and barriers to trade. In the early 1990’s they had actually eliminated agricultural tariffs but this has changed due to the evil EU Common Agricultural Policy. They have implemented education vouchers. They have also reformed their pension system and have George Bush style individual retirement accounts.

* How a sacred duty like education should not be subject to the afflictions of competition

* That they don’t understand the Constitution, particularly the bit about “general welfare”

* Nor understand surveys they participate in

* How they don’t make testable predictions

* That they are cardboard cutouts of “real” economists

* That they blithely promote suffering in the elderly

* How CEO compensation is vitally important to the productivity of an entire economy

* That the free market is in fact not perfect, and moreover is just untried elitist dogma

* How economists fail to study issues like burdens of gov’t and war on the economy, barriers to market entry, or pro-business subsidies

Clearly, the inferior minds of living economists are too distracted by history, data, and ideological pissing matches to see the truth. They should just do us all a favor and kill themselves so we can hurry up and deify them — it would sure make it a lot easier to dis the succeeding generation of economists without making a coherent argument.

Speaking personally, I am blessed that the Internet tubes bring this timeless wisdom to my Netscape.

Nor have they made any great effort to help the American people understand the economics of a government which has invested trillions in infrastructure, most of which is used free by only the largest of corporations.

When do you see a discussion of the difference between an industry like a railroad, which has a huge sunk investment in right-of-way, and a retailer, which has most of their investment in saleable inventory? How can both of these types of industry both be subject to the same “market rules”?

In short, it’s not that hard to find them ducking the hard questions, in favor of their easy answers that flatter the rich. They’re simply not credible.

Showing that K-Street lobbyists know more than most economists.

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The slogans of the free market offer little guidance to one on how to solve real problems. Perhaps people here may want to take on the exercise of how to reconcile the free market, private property rights, telecom regulation/deregulation and a desired outcome, like, say Network Neutrality.

If one goes through the exercise, I think one will see that the free market, property rights, lack of government regulation are all engineering principles, which help guide us to good solutions; and as with all good engineering solutions, there are compromises that have to be made. These are not moral precepts and a good solution may need them to be violated to some extent. Engineering principles are not good candidates on which to base ideologies.

For example, the real issues behind free trade aren’t tariffs, or such agreements and disputes between parties to such agreements wouldn’t result in thousands of pages of complex legal documents. The real issues about free trade are in the social system around free trade, ranging from copyright and patent laws, environmental regulations, labor laws, unions, and so forth. Similarly, the question isn’t whether one likes the free market, but which free market.

It certainly depends what you mean by “free market:” laissez-faire, or is a welfare state allowed to piggyback on it? By the former measure, Scandinavia certainly lags; by the latter, it is comparable to the United States (for example) because rule of law and private property are sure to a similar degree. (see here)

What will be interesting is whether market-oriented countries with large welfare states can continue to meet their obligations as their populations age. If not, will there be a deleterious effect on economic productivity? Or liberty, as Hayek (and Friedman later) warned?

“Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway and an accomplished investor, has noted the troubling contributions that compensation consultants have made to executive pay in recent years.

”Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance,” he wrote in his most recent annual report. ”The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse C.E.O. — aided by his handpicked V.P. of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet & Bingo — all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.”

— Mr. Buffett too is behind in his evolution.

Just as there is nexus between lobbyists, think tanks (opinion makers) and legislators, there is a similar nexus between executive pay committees, consulting firms and the board of directors. This has been documented innumerable times in our free press.

There are other conflicts of interest galore. For instance, the managers of funds that your company includes as options on your 401K typically vote their shares going along with board of directors’ decisions - the conflict of interest is obvious.

One should paraphrase Gandhi and say - the free market? It would be a good idea.

The problem is that the class of people who have effective control of the economy can and do sacrifice the free market in their own interests, but promote the free market where it does not affect them; and so far, there is no check on them or accountability for it. The general public, by swallowing “free market” as a religious concept instead of as an empirical one that constantly needs to be tested to see if it applies, aids in this self-deception.

What is the point of replacing the mythology of God with the mythology of “we live in a free market country” or “in a country where every vote counts”? The first dismissals are “you are indulging in the politics of racism, or of class warfare”. Add on top of that the kind of nonsense that one’s not buying into this secular mythology is a sign of being behind in evolution.