That's a good book, but I'd argue that in a pure free market without intervention, monopolies would be disappointingly common (and why some level of regulation should exist).
That's a good book, but I'd argue that in a pure free market without intervention, monopolies would be disappointingly common (and why some level of regulation should exist).
Absolute free market, like any other idea taken extreme, is cancerous.
History shows us that the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is.
For example, the software industry. It's pretty much completely unregulated. Prices for software have gone to zero. Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
Safe to say that money and prosperity can be linked, but are not equal.
Lack of regulation in tech causes real harm, like addiction, social issues and misinformation,not to mention issues with cyber bullying and suicide in teens.
Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
To paraphrase Doctor Who "Human progress isn't measured by industry, it's measured by the value you place on a life. An unimportant life. A life without privilege"
And by that measure we are still cavemen.
> Lack of regulation in tech causes real harm, like addiction, social issues and misinformation,not to mention issues with cyber bullying and suicide in teens.
None of those had effective regulation.
Regulation against fraud does work, but the job of government is to prevent crime, enforce contracts, and stop fraud, in a free market.
> And by that measure we are still cavemen.
Government is not going to fix that.
> Do some people make out like bandits with billions or millions of dollars, sure but I don't think that's a good barometer for progress or prosperity.
In the 1800s the US lifted scores of millions of people out of poverty into the middle class.
> History shows us that the more free market an economy is, the more prosperous it is.
Ad infinitum? No it doesn’t.
> Prices for software have gone to zero.
On earth?
> Software engineers routinely become millionaires, and some billionaires.
They don’t but if they did, this could mean the opposite of what you think it means.
Nobody has discovered a limit to prosperity under a free market.
I didn't pay a cent for any of the software on my Linux machine. Free Open Source software is everywhere.
In the 1990s, the Seattle Times wrote that there were 10,000 Microsoft millionaires in the Seattle area, excluding the value of their homes.
Charles Simonyi became a billionaire as a Microsoft employee.
How do you know that it would all evolve to a handful of companies? I hear your sentiment all the time, people just assume it is true.
We obviously cannot know.
However, what we do know is that a free market requires management people today aren't accustomed to. Suddenly you are fully responsible to negotiate protection, transit, etc. That is a burden many would find off-putting and, in many cases, something beyond their capabilities.
If we were magically dropped into a free market tomorrow it is likely we would quickly attach ourselves to whomever is willing to give us those things without needing extra thought, just like the monopoly does today, and – tada – we're right back to the way things are right now.
If we were born into a free market and didn't know anything else then monopolies might be harder to pull off. That said, while the initial conditions were a bit different, we've been in a similar situation before and the monopoly won in the end.
I believe the exact opposite: you need collusion with the state to establish a monopoly. And you don’t have a pure free market as long as there is a state that puts its heavy hand on the scale to favour one group over another.
The free market has its flaws, but many blame it for the ills caused by corruption and lobbying of politicians.
There has never been a truly free market anywhere in the world, let alone ‘pure’, so I don’t see why you use this adjective at all.
Every corporation requires collusion with the state to simply exist, so of course it’s a requirement for a monopoly.
> I'd argue that in a pure free market without intervention, monopolies would be disappointingly common
How? If a monopoly were to emerge in what was a pure free market, it would become the government, and its rules would become regulation on the market. And thus the pure free market could no longer exist. Monopolies and free markets cannot coexist.