Uh, no. It proves that your definition of "free market" is a straw man.

Uhhh…no - It’s the results of both national and foreign entreprenuers freely selling their products to consumers who are freely purchasing them. Gov’t regulates access to the products and imposes taxes and tariffs and requires the retailer to collect the taxes and turn them over to the gov’t.

They do a lot more than that. They, for instance, prevent a Miller-Budweiser conglomerate from buying out all the microbreweries and leaning on the ingredient manufacturers not to sell to other companies. basic anti-monopolistic controls. Without which you would have exactly one beer to buy.

Again this isn't theory this is fact: Ma Bell. Microsoft. US Steel. Monopolies are the lowest energy state for a free market, they will inevitably settle down to that state given enough time. Inevitably.

Apparently you are, I’m afraid. No serious Liberal thinker from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman has ever argued the virtues of anarchy. Even Liberals want government to exist as a referee to enforce basic rules.

Which again just goes to prove even the hard core free marketeers admit that their system fails.

The essence of free trade is that the exchange be voluntary. You can’t simultaneously have a free transaction and collusion.

How can it be voluntary if you have government regulation? Short answer- it can't. Which is why the free marketeers oppose government regulation. Except that at the end of the day they know their system can't work as envisioned.

You can't have it both ways, James. You are trying to simultaneously argue that free marketeers are fine with government regulation and that government regulation kills free market competition. Pick one.

Or better yet abandon the farcical notion altogether.

That diversity of product you see in the “likker” aisle is a function of the US government preventing monopoly and collusion.

Uhhh...no - It's the results of both national and foreign entreprenuers freely selling their products to consumers who are freely purchasing them. Gov't regulates access to the products and imposes taxes and tariffs and requires the retailer to collect the taxes and turn them over to the gov't.

Apparently you are, I'm afraid. No serious Liberal thinker from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman has ever argued the virtues of anarchy. Even Liberals want government to exist as a referee to enforce basic rules.

The essence of free trade is that the exchange be voluntary. You can't simultaneously have a free transaction and collusion.

Really? In what fantasy world? Maybe you better visit the local likker store and check the beer aisle.

So you think beer manufacturers exist in a free market? Are you unaware that the US government does indeed regulate commerce?

Are you unfamiliar with what the term "free market" means? It means capitalism that proceeds without regulation: free to proceed as dictated merely by the whims of the market. The US is not a free market. We have highly regulated capitalistic commerce.

That diversity of product you see in the "likker" aisle is a function of the US government preventing monopoly and collusion. I.e. the opposite of a free market.

While competition weeds out inefficient enterprises, it seldom leads to monopoly.

The history of free commerce would suggest otherwise. There is no force in free market capitalism that restrains a successful company from leveraging that success so as to make it a permanent fixture. Ma Bell. US Steel. Microsoft. These are not exceptions to the rule. They are the rule. Without strong government safe guards monopoly control is the inevitable end of free market capitalism because the opportunity will exist eventually and there is no reason a company won't exploit it.

Even libertarian purists, starting with Adam Smith, believed it was legitimate for govt to step in and regulate against collusion.

In other words even the founding father of free market capitalism admits it doesn't work! A free market isn't free if there is an outide entity manipulating it and you just admitted that it has to have such manipulation or it is unstable.

A functioning free market is much like a functioning communist state: nice theory, but impossible to implement in reality.

They likely aren't at this stage although I suspect there were more poor people created during the transition period, in the form of lost jobs and higher prices. It's a trade-off, though, and it's perfectly reasonable to expect firms to minimize the negative externalities on the community.

And I'm sure Gore wants to alleviate poverty; I don't mean to imply that he's a bad man. But things like Kyoto necessarily burden the developing societies more than those at the top of the heap. Then again, harming the most productive countries doesn't do the poor much good, either.

that, contrary to conventional wisdom, as societies become more affluent, they produce less pollution

Isn't the correct statement as societies become more affluent the produce less pollution per unit of output.

The average affluent OECD citizen will produce more pollution then the average African even if the OECD
citizen is more efficient then the African counterpart.

If this is correct the proper policy is still to increase energy efficiency.

Second, I doubt that Gore differs significantly from you in his desire to reduce poverty. It is just that he makes a very different estimate of the impact of pollution on poverty. His policy position is that if we allowed pollution to continue growing unchecked is that it will have severe economic consequences that will increase poverty. while you seem to be taking a zero or negative sum game that spending to reduce pollution will make poverty worse. At best, you seem to be taking a very narrow view of what constitutes economic well being. Yes, there was a cost to reducing smog in Los Angles, for example.
But it does not mean that the poor residences of LA are worse off because they have paid a price to get clean air.

Come on, you know that’s bull. “Free” markets inevitably strangle choice because one competitor sooner or later manages to get a death hold monopoly and kills off any rivals

Really? In what fantasy world? Maybe you better visit the local likker store and check the beer aisle.

While competition weeds out inefficient enterprises, it seldom leads to monopoly. Even libertarian purists, starting with Adam Smith, believed it was legitimate for govt to step in and regulate against collusion.

Right. That’s what free markets inevitably create. Rather than one kind of car, you get dozens of cars each from Ford, Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Infiniti, Jeep, Porshe, etc. All those companies provide thousands of jobs. Indeed, their distributorships are mostly sole proprietorships. Free markets equal choice which equals freedom.

Come on, you know that's bull. "Free" markets inevitably strangle choice because one competitor sooner or later manages to get a death hold monopoly and kills off any rivals (Perhaps you've heard of microsoft?). The only exception is when the competitors enter into collusion and divvy up territory to maintain mini-monopolies where they have a cad's agreement not to compete with each other (cable companies).

A free market is the most unstable element in the universe. It has a half life of about a nano-second. Without significant government oversight no capitalism can actually survive "in the wild." In the economics classroom? Sure. But economics classes and reality have never had any significant overlap, now have they?

When James et all speak of free markets your really only discussing the kind of institutions that are great for selling consumer goods. Not economic structures that are good for solving large national and global structural problems like energy distribution.

Right. That's what free markets inevitably create. Rather than one kind of car, you get dozens of cars each from Ford, Chevy, Pontiac, Buick, Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Infiniti, Jeep, Porshe, etc. All those companies provide thousands of jobs. Indeed, their distributorships are mostly sole proprietorships. Free markets equal choice which equals freedom.