Marketism
Marketism is a loose aggregation of beliefs that generally oppose government and favor private enterprise, almost always advocating for "smaller" government or at least less government regulation of private business (laissez-faire economics). Some advocate for the abolishment of government altogether.
Terminology
- Marketism is short for market fundamentalism or free market fundamentalism, and is also known as free-marketism and market extremism.
- An adherent of marketism is called a free-marketeer or free-marketist.
- Marketeers who advocate for the complete abolishment of government often self-identify as anarcho-capitalists (AnCaps for short), a form of anarchism, or as advocates of "Austrian economics", a reference to the Mises Institute.
- Marketism that advocates for "smaller" government (i.e. deregulation) rather than no government (i.e. anarchism) is a form of minarchism.
Questions
Some questions for marketeers:
- Do you agree that voluntarism has some issues that need to be resolved?
- Do you agree that government sometimes "gets it right", i.e. takes actions whose effects are primarily (and intentionally) beneficial?
- Do you agree that some amount of coercion is necessary in any society?
- How do you resolve the discrepancy between the idea of a "purely voluntary" society and the idea that it would be okay for private individuals to hire a police force?
- Do you dispute that property rights are a form of coercion?
- Do you dispute that the need for employment in order to survive is a form of coercion?
- These two points have been raised here; no answer as of 2015-02-14.
Techniques
"rights" means "law enforcement is immoral"
- Get you to accept their definition of "rights", which is that they are created by nature (not humans) and yet are undetectable to science. (Kind of like "God".)
- Once you've accepted this, they get you to accept their (reasonable-sounding) list of what those (undetectable) rights are, because <select arbitrary explanation from list and insert here&rt;.
- On the basis of that list of inalienable natural rights that you can't argue with because NATURE, they can then argue that taxation is theft and the use of force by governments to keep people from doing bad things is the Worst Thing Evar.
Hypothesis
Marketist philosophy may be summed up as "In the absence of government, we will be safe from people who want to exploit others because we can freely form organizations to protect ourselves from those of ill intent. These organizations are different from governments because they will do things the way I think things ought to be done, and because I will, of course, be among the leaders." (h/t Jeremy Nixon in this thread)