RE: Marxism Versus Capitalism | Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux
The problem with so many of these debates about "free market capitalism" is that they hold up the United States as an example. Whether or not you agree with the tenets of free market capitalism, there is no reality-based argument that can reasonably be made that the United States represents anything like free market capitalism. Interest rates are centrally controlled by the Federal Reserve. The use of official federal currency is legally mandated. The FED, the ECB, the BOJ and a variety of other central banks directly purchase their own debt as well as equities, bonds, and financial instruments of all kinds to manipulate and control markets. Quasi-governmental international groups like the IMF and the World Bank exert massive influence over global markets in a variety of substantial ways.
There is certainly a debate to be had over whether or not "free markets" are beneficial or desirable, but to put forth the United States as an example of a "free market" is to construct a straw man.
How does government control of the means of exchange, per se, affect workings of the market?
I can't see that it does. Whether people are exchanging for Bitcoin or pukka shells, the principals of market economics would seem to apply nonetheless.
It completely destroys the possibility of a free market. When the value of the means of exchange can be unilaterally and arbitrarily altered by a central power there is no price discovery. This would be true even if we were only mandated to use a single government issued currency, and the currency itself wasn't massively manipulated by the FED (it is).
In a free market, people would be free to choose what sort of units of exchange they wanted to use. They wouldn't be forced to use government fiat that is inflated away on the whims of the oligarchs on Wall Street. Units of exchange that were responsibly managed and credible would gain popularity, while volatile and unreliable means of exchange would be abandoned. Dominant units of exchange would start more accurately representing the value of what those units were worth in terms of what they could be used to purchase or barter for, rather than how many trillions are printed by a central bank.
In a free market, people would be free to open banks and accept deposits and issue loans in any of these units of exchange that drew demand. They wouldn't be forced at the point of a gun to participate in a government mandated ponzi-scheme in order to make the basic purchases, trades and payments that life requires.
Not only does the government prevent you from exchanging different forms of exchange (such as bitcoin) through absurd regulations, taxes, and fees, but they demand that those taxes, fees and fines are paid in government fiat dollars - maintaining their monopoly.
We do this not only in our own country, but on a global scale, through the use of the US dollar as a "reserve currency". Forcing other countries to use our country similarly destroys markets and creates a huge artificial demand for US dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency
Internationally, like domestically, we enforce our market manipulation at the point of a gun. What happens when a country wants to go off the US dollar as their reserve currency? You could try asking Saddam Hussein and Gadaffi.
I agree with this when the Federal Reserve was created we still were somewhat tied to gold until the end of Bretton Woods. Most people blame our current economic problem on Reagan and the trickle down economics. Our country has spiraled downwards after the rise of hippie economics and the ending of Bretton Woods.
https://imgur.com/imZN8I1