(Without government-enforced creation of scarcity, competitive markets occur, and the return on capital approaches zero. All profit goes to rents...and the only scarce resource worth paying for is [specifically] skilled labor). EITHER you're pro- big-business and implicitly anti-free(d)-markets OR you're anti-free(d) markets and implicitly pro-big-business..
Russ Roberts has more.
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Does the free market you are talking about include an unlimited freedom of contract? IE, individuals, groups of individuals, and firms, can make any contract they please and set any enforcement mechanism they please?
Theoretically, yes, this applies there. Cartel is unenforceable, and hiring someone like James Gosling, is enough to make any cartel agreement that might exist between Google and Oracle fail.
In that case, both historical evidence and economic theory says that ALL profit goes to (skilled) labor.
In reality, unlimited freedom of contract isn't going to be enforceable anywhere under any circumstances. People are stupid and make mistakes, and any sort of contract law/agreement will need some sort of escape clause.
Historical evolved Jewish law, for instance, says debts cannot persist past 7 years. You cannot, then, sell yourself into permanent slavery...but only for 7 years.
There is a question of inviolable rights...rights you can't trade away, even if you want to. But I'm not sure which question you're asking.
Fundamentally, I'm opposed to top-down law. Law from the middle is bad. Precedent...this is how this group of folks handles stuff is relatively good.
I'm in particular a huge fan of jury nullification. Central law is stupid, locals won't enforce it, central authority should have no power to override. I'd expect onerous contracts (lifetime slavery, death for abortion) to simply be violated routinely by local agencies.
Indeed, in any reasonable system of patchwork legal systems with free movement of labor...Bob would be able to decamp from Slave-onia to Nullification-ia, and move out of the reach of the Slaveonian authority/contract. Much like Tax havens don't recognize income tax fraud as a crime, and so won't extradite...and Northern juries would often NOT return slaves, even with the law clear...so too would local patchwork systems prevent over-onerous contracts via safe exit to friendly regime.
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