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Monday, November 21, 2011

The Market and The Mind

The market is a product of the mind.

The human mind is pretty much the only thing on this planet that honors our money.

The greatest determining factor in the health the markets is the collection of ideas that people have about the market.

Since the market is a collection of ideas we have about the markets, then what we think about the market matters.

If a large number of people think that the market is a place where one must dominate or perish, then the market turns into an ugly place where one must dominate or perish (with more people perishing than dominating).

If one thinks that the market is a predatory environment where base creatures are set against eachother in brutal competition for survival, then the market becomes just such a place.

When business leaders are trained in the art of war and see the market as a battlefield, then the market becomes an ugly battlefield with people holed up in encampments doing business war with eachother.

People have known that the market is a product of the mind for ages. The left has this fantasy of an engineered society with philosopher kings dictating good behavior.

The left uses its hegemony in the schools and media to perpetuate every negative idea that people have about the market ... knowing that when enough people believe the market is such, that the market will become such.

Conservatives believe that they can defend freedom by reacting, but one can't win the war of ideas by rolling up into a reactionary ball. The reactionary surrenders the whole definition of culture to the enemies of freedom.

The reactionary is as great a threat to liberty as the wild-eyed radical.

America has been caught in the tug of war between radicals and reactions for the last century. As a result, there has been a systematic loss of freedom.

Conservatives have been consistently ineffective at defending freedom. Reactionary politics does not advance freedom.

To restore freedom, we actually have to have a pro-freedom movement. This is next to impossible because conservatives keep throwing themselves in the way.

A profreedom movement would start with the realization that the market is the creation of the human mind. The market is a product of our collective thoughts about the market.

The battle against freedom has been waging since antiquity. To restore our freedom, people must challenge every single idea that they have about the market.

I've asked fundamental questions and came up with surprising answers. I asked if competition was the foundation of the free market. I realized that it wasn't. Freedom is the foundation of the free market.

I asked if business was war. Of course, it is not. When people apply the ideas of Machiavelli and Sun Tsu to the market place, they diminish the market place.

Those who are engaged in "business war" are enemies of freedom.

Stock traders and hedgefunds who see themselves as predators to cull the herd are enemies of the free market.

We can't outlaw modes of thinking, but we can challenge them. So, the best path to restoring the free market is to directly challenge all of the negative ideas about the free market being taught by the enemies of the free market.

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