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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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I like the free market too, but having a small number of companies control a necessary resource definitely isn’t a free market.
That's part of the issue with free markets. There's a missing part to the term that most people drop for some reason, and that would be 'competition'. Competition doesn't last very long before there are winners and losers. When it comes to the economy, that means the winner is the largest company and the losers are the companies that were bought or shut down. The end game of free market competition is monopoly. The only reason the competition doesn't end is because of government regulation to facilitate and uphold capitalist free markets.
Yeah this is exactly what free market lunatics on the right don’t understand. Monopoly isn’t a free market. Free markets simply cannot exist without regulation to prevent unfair business practices.
Also any reasonable economist can tell you that the free market does not solve issues like the tragedy of the commons, because negative externalities are not factored in. It is also the government’s job to ‘internalize’ externalities so companies actually see the costs of, for example, polluting our air and water.
TLDR: free market != unregulated market
I respect your reasoning, though I disagree about free markets being better than a democratically managed economy. I think free markets are inherently oppositional to a cooperative society, and that the myth of the commons was invented as a justification for capitalism.
A.K.A. what Adam Smith was really talking about when he mentioned the "invisible hand" (contrary to what the laissez-faire cargo-cultists think).
today, I got a clarified/alternate point of view. today was a good day. thank you, internet friend.
There's no such thing as a free market.
Yeah, I agree, I think a true free market is basically impossible because there will always be winners and those companies will certainly use their power to stifle competition. Also it is difficult for the consumer to evaluate every product they buy even if there is a number of competitors, so issues like what @Telorand@reddthat.com mentioned (sawdust in food) come up because consumers just don’t have the measurement equipment to check.
I like not having sawdust in my food and legal recourse when a company takes advantage of me, so regulated markets are my preferred method.
What do you like about free markets?
I think a free market in a given sector can encourage innovation. That’s not to say all sectors need innovation, there’s not a lot of innovation to be had in many sectors, like providing water, or housing, and those probably don’t need to be a free market. They could be provided by the government for example.
I could be convinced that some kind of hybrid market would work, though I'd have to see some reasonable examples of how we'd prevent monopolies and corporate collusion/racketeering.
I think that’s mostly driven by regulatory capture and the fact that lobbyists can drive regulation. If our government actually worked for the people, we could actually enforce monopoly laws, and the SEC (or equivalent in countries besides the US) would actually prevent mergers that threaten competition. The government is supposed to prevent this kind of behavior, but they have basically been bought out.
As for how to stop that from happening, I’m not sure. I think it would require at least getting rid of the two party system, because that stifles competition in the governance space. That means that even though there are probably lots of voters who would vote for a real candidate who would break monopolies, there is no such candidate available. But in order for that to work we would have to switch to a different voting method, like ranked-choice (or one of the even more fair ones).