Talk:Free market

Good addition in the intro, however let's look at this:

• They act ostensibly to protect the national interest, but often baser motives are at play, particularly the desire to curry favour with their electorates.

The Duelfer Report, for example says,

• Iraq’s economic decline forced the Regime to accept the UN [Oil For Food] (OFF) program; this resulted in economic recovery and underpinned a more confident Regime posture. [1]

and

• [Oil For Food] rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.

So....in a dictatorship, while it's arguable the lone dictator making decisions to pursue WMD may or may not serve the national interest, and it certainly is a baser motive at play, it is questionable to say this it is intended to curry favor with the electorate. While that may be true in democracies, we can't make a wholesale statment like this, or need to clarify what is being said. RobS 17:32, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

Idealized construct

Marshall, if you think the free market is only an idealized construct, please provide evidence of this.

On the other hand, if you don't know this to be true, but are only repeating the opinion of an economist (or maybe some political critic of Capitalism), be sure to credit the person whose views you are summarizing. A direct quote is even better. --Ed Poor ^Talk 09:29, 10 July 2007 (EDT)