There are people who claim to support free markets but defend a central bank that price fixes most important price in the economy:
-- the price of borrowing and using resources up today at the expense of tomorrow.
They then casually dismiss both our astronomical overconsumption & debt problems...
Central banks are the anti free market
Jeff Booth coined it a bit shorter in his book title. How about:
"central bank that price fixes the most important price in the economy: the price of tomorrow."
It's not free market capitalism when the cost of capital itself is centrally planned 
I agree. What is a better way (beyond the hand wavy “let the market decide”)
The market doesn't "decide," price controls don't work because the price is a result of voluntary market interaction. It's a thermometer, not the heat itself.
Price controls are analogous to capping the thermometer and letting pressure build up, while claiming that we've controlled the temperature outside.
Saying "the market decides" is like suggesting we are "letting the weather decide the temperature" instead of the weatherman. When the second statement is just nonsense. The weatherman doesn't control the weather, if he is manipulating the thermometer then its just lying about what the real temperature is.
My proposal isn't about "letting the markets decide," because markets are literally the only thing that create prices in the first place. I'm saying we shouldn't have institutions with the express authority to completely monopolize a market and then lie about the price.
Price controls are simply lies, we should just stop lying.
“It's a thermometer, not the heat itself. “
👌
I've come to associate the concept of price controls as a form of subtle moral evil, in that a ruler decrees a value for a good that does not accurately match the real value for that good.
So it has to distort the truth.
I think, in an indirect way, it is lying?
While I think all value is subjective (as a good has different utility for every individual), there is still a kind of market truth.
If money could not be manipulated, then the going price of a thing would accurately reflect its place in a society's hierarchy of value
how do you stop them?
Great post Guy!
Your analogy is pretty god damn good. Permission to use at my next presentation?
Of course 🫡
It’s amazing how confident people who act from low data and emotion are. “Let’s just tell everyone what they can charge!
“Yeah!!” the mob yells. That is how you get fairness! Tell people what to do! What could go wrong?
IQ is a measurement of how many data points an individual can hold in stasis as overall comprehension is formed.
People usually don't know what free market is and that free market has nothing to do with freedom. You have a central that issues trillions and direct it to oligarchs, exactly because it has been left more free as it should
