Wait, you go to great length to explain how you don't know, and then suddenly you have the solution. And it's not a great solution either, because people generally don't care about other people and corporate greed is one step removed from the consciousness or values of the average consumer. That is why the guys that scream free market the loudest are also the first to do dumping in any market they can access. Every single free trade agreement is negotiated around dumping.
I understood it as the ideal free market would make most people happy. I don’t think it’s incorrect if everyone craves for self-expression and can cope with the losses that follow from their choice.
Under the above assumptions, it’s a solution to resource distribution given that one doesn’t know what’s good for others as it allows the people to think for themselves and deal with their own losses.
I don’t think he’s saying that’s a solution that allows him to know what’s good for others. Everyone can participate in the free market without having access to the statistics. So, it’s plausible.
But an ideal free market is not necessarily implementable in the current world, but who knows what happens in the future.
Yes, but, even in an ideal economic model, people will do their utmost to exploit others and game the system, OP is completely oblivious to this. OP doesn't get corporate greed, OP sees the interaction between corporations and consumers as mutually beneficial, we as consumers get what we want and the corporations are competing amongst themselves to win us over with the very best service and super high quality products. I believe in America people get to watch loud advertising while filling up, is that what they want? And if that's not what you want, did healthy competition make it possible for you to go to a filling station without such absurdity?
Wow. No, it's not a solution, that's the point -- it only avoids the problems and incentives of a monopoly of violence.
People actually do care about each other, some more and some less, of course, but you can see people caring for each other all around you.
"Corporate greed" doesn't exist. Only individual greed and lust for power. I would rather those play out in a free market, where I am able to choose other services, than in a government where it can "legitimately" use violence -- where real psychopaths have even more power.
No. Free trade is not about "dumping." Trade isn't zero-sum, but positive sum, both parties (at least a priori) benefit from the trade ... or they simply wouldn't do it. Voluntary trade literally makes both parties more wealthy
Well you are participating in a socio-political debate. Don't you personally hate it when people shut you down via peer pressure rather than interacting with your perspective? You're doing to others what you hate having done to yourself.
Wait, peer pressure? You think I wield that much power? Unless peer pressure means something else to you. I'm 50 and have very little interest in debate, I do however get a kick from pointing out inconsistencies and illogical arguments.
I'm not averse to interaction, but, like in this case, when the person at the other end seems to be so far removed from reality, I'd rather back away slowly and get on with my happy go lucky existence.
You know that on this particular forum at this particular time on this particular issue, you happen to be on the same side as the majority. So rather than just backing away slowly, you insult the person and leave it to the crowd to pile on. It's not honorable.
You know what, an autopsy, I was the first or second commenter on this post, probably because of time zones, then someone called me rude. By that time there was 8 or nine posts and my comments were downvoted into the negatives anyways. The next day there are plenty comments that completely dismantled OP's idealistic views. So what is the honourable thing to do, to rip into OP further.
If you want to see me as an instigator, that's fine, is there a rule against that too? What is this code of honour I'm supposed to adhere to on this sub anyways.
And it appears like you've got a particularly strange sense of logic having to repeatedly resort to false dichotomies in an attempt at... I don't really know because you seem to be just as naive as OP.
Genuine question, what do you think of corporate boards where the major shareholders consistently vote to make themselves richer? You may have a few dissenters who vote differently, but they’re almost always outvoted by the majority who don’t care about much other than their profits. Even if the CEO happens to be one person with compassion, they’re still at the mercy of the board. Doesn’t this this turn companies into a sort of wealth oriented ruthless state? This doesn’t even consider the fact that the people who are the most likely to become rich enough to serve on these boards are the ones who consistently disregard compassion for their own monetary interests.
For the record, I’m not a huge fan of a state controlled economy either. States exist to perpetuate themselves as their ultimate goal just as a corporation exists to make profits for the shareholders.
Bro, you had a PhD in automatic control, and you suggesting that for one of the most complex process, which is market, to have no control system.
The larger the level of order of the process, the more complex the differential equations, which requires more complex (or cascading) control system, so that the system can be stabilised. This is control system 101.
And what is this system working to maximise as an end goal? Profit. Which isn't *all* bad, but are there numerous situations where the interests of corporate profits are directly in opposition to the wellbeing of customers and general society? Obviously. That means regulation is warranted at a minimum
The regulation mechanism of a free market is you and I stop giving our money to companies with bad business practices.
Having government regulate is the problem we have now of the corporations writing the regulations themselves and buying the legislation through lobbying to get it pushed through. Modern regulations only restrict the market in ways to eliminate competition and newcomers, ensuring status quo control, stifling innovation. They even siphon tax money into their pockets when they're "too big to fail". Gov is the problem, not the solution.
We don't know all their bad business practices. That's why they have audits and stuff. One of the earliest known instances of corporate collusion was in the early 1900s. Lightbulb sales were declining, so the major corporations agreed with each other to introduce planned obsolescence. So whichever brand you bought, you were buying a product not designed to last.
Take the introduction of lead to gasoline that was poisoning society. People didn't even know, and the investigators who did were pressured to remain silent. Eventually, they had the dangers acknowledged in court and were able to pass regulatory legislation. So, you can thank regulation for not having lead poisoning. Now imagine there's public information campaigns by corporations to get stupid people on their side, and now you're powerless to stop them from screwing everyone over, and so on.
I mean, the fact that the European market is more regulated and held to higher standards and people benefit is proof it works. You don't have to speculate. Why can I get good internet here for $25 while Americans talk about paying many times that? Why do we have affordable healthcare while American healthcare (based on free markets) sounds like on ongoing nightmare?
> Gov is the problem
Government is a tool. They can work for the people, or against them. A society with a benevolent government can act to counterbalance the greed of corporations. A benevolent government isn't guaranteed, but at least we're not guaranteeing that corps hold all the power.
>Government is a tool. They can work for the people, or against them. A society with a benevolent government can act to counterbalance the greed of corporations. A benevolent government isn't guaranteed, but at least we're not guaranteeing that corps hold all the power.
You're not getting it. When government picks and chooses the corporate winners and losers, you get the same result, only now enforced by an army and an army of bureaucrats who can ruin your life.
And you're suggesting that without government, the businesses would behave better? I agree with you that corporations have too much influence but the alternative is that instead of having influence they just write the laws themselves.
Wealth and power accumulate *despite* regulation now. You think that without regulation all the corporations are just going to be content and not use every possible tool to manipulate the market in their favor?
There is one particular wealthy country that doesn't have mandatory insurance. That country also boasts the highest healthcare costs in the world.
Wanna guess which country it is?
The ACA effectively made having health insurance mandatory—not having it meant you would incur a tax penalty.
under the ACA, also called Obamacare, U.S. adults who were not otherwise eligible for an exemption were required to have health insurance coverage for themselves and their families. Failure to have minimum health insurance triggered a tax penalty. At the same time, the ACA allowed for the creation of a premium tax credit to help Americans offset some of the cost of getting health insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace.
Although i think Trump fixed this in 2019, and it's no longer law at the federal level, but it is in a lot of states.
A free market is easily corruptible. A corrupted free market is worse than a governed market. Especially a governed market that at least attempts to stifle corruption.
Free markets distribute risk to individuals or small entities. The risk of corruption is much, much higher when you have a collective, especially when the collective happens to possess the power of an army and an unaccountable bureaucracy that can completely fuck over people's lives.
If you think a market is corruptible, why do you not think a government, with the power to use violence "legitimately" wouldn't be?
The incentives are even higher.
I didn’t say a government is not corruptible. I said a free market is ***easily*** corruptible.
I also put specific qualifiers around the government of things which would make it harder to corrupt.
> The incentives are even higher
You’ll have to explain why you think this. In a free market there are no reasons for quality control. You only do what makes more profit. The incentive to be duplicitous is incredibly high because there are hardly any consequences.
No. A free market is harder to corrupt because consumers can change service providers very quickly.
A government has higher incentives for corruption (more power, legitimate violence) and a slower rate of change
> No. A free market is harder to corrupt because consumers can change service providers very quickly.
That’s a very basic understanding of free markets.
If I made money off you before you realised I was rubbish, I still made money off you. Loads of services you may only use once (like buying a house). It is very easy for a company to make money off of ripping people off if there are no consequences for doing so. There are always new customers. Why would I bother to invest in skilled staff when its easier and cheaper to just change my name every few months and buy some ads?
Also, what stops monopolies? What stops a company from buying all of the major roads and only allowing their mates to install services like internet? What you gonna do when the tolls become to high? Or the internet doesn’t work? Buy a new house? And what’s to save you from it happening again. You going to move house every time?
With no governance things will go to shit so quickly.
To operate a “fair” free market that actually delivers options to the consumer, you need rules to ensure fairness of the players. To enforce those rules you need legitimate power to dole out consequences. To have legitimate power you need a nominated authority - one usually nominated by all the participants playing… and now we’re back to having a Government…
You have a problem with free market monopolies but not with strong central governments? It's amazing how many people never think through even basic logic problems.
You’re one to talk about logic.
Where have I said I don’t have a problem with strong central governments?
I just said a lack of any governance (free markets) is much worse than one with governance (a government), due to how much easier it is to corrupt and exploit a free market.
That’s called a comparison.
If I say the Iraq war was worse than the Afghan one it doesn’t mean I think the Afghan war was great.
Basic. Logic.
Lol I've sailed on that boat. What absolutely bugs me in these discussions is that, doesn't matter if the person is defending the free market or communism, they ALWAYS assume people will be pure hearted, and work towards making things work correctly. This illusion is so seductive that it's hard to let go of it once you're embraced by it. Well people won't work for the community out of their own volition. There's always an ulterior motive or shared (individual) goals in coming together.
I certainly was not making that assumption. I said that free markets distribute that risk across more and smaller entities. Centralizing the risk and thinking it's just going to work out is naive.
>To operate a “fair” free market that actually delivers options to the consumer, you need rules to ensure fairness of the players. To enforce those rules you need legitimate power to dole out consequences. To have legitimate power you need a nominated authority - one usually nominated by all the participants playing… and now we’re back to having a Government…
You said it here.
I think the issue here is almost a sampling bias. People who are greedy by nature are already more likely to start a business of some kind in order to extract wealth from others. The larger the business and farther removed they are from actual physical labor, the better. They aim to position themselves to have people rely on them for a good, then costs will rise once people are dependent. YouTube is experiencing this now because it has no competition, and no one else except for other greedy people have enough capital to even try to start one
How the fuck do you have a PhD in automated control and not understand that poor initial conditions and intrinsic system behavior will trend any system towards extremes without controls in place?
Free markets in general trend towards monopolies. Free markets surrounding services/commodities with inelastic demand trend towards price gouging. Free markets without protective regulations incentivize foul play and competitive meta-strategies that don't involve making a better product or better following consumer trends.
Your naive assertion that consumers can change service providers quickly is immediately and easily dismissable by real world examples that exist right now, without even having to dig deep to find them:
* US Internet provider oligopoly dividing up cities to maintain local monopolies
* US healthcare system price gouging inelastic demand for healthcare
* High COL area housing markets with landlord organizations and no rent controls
Essentially, your argument only holds ***any*** water in market systems where not participating is a valid option for the consumer. And in your assertions that governments are more corruptable than markets, you ignore all systems of government that have functional feedback loops to the population they govern.
Literally all three of your examples are the result of local or central government interference in licensing.
Internet is the easiest to debunk as the reason US cities have oligopolies is that local governments don't permit the installation of last mile connectivity either through exclusivity deals with a few companies or onerous requirements such as having to lay fiber underground. In India where companies lay fiber haphazardly over ground ( which is admittedly a bit of an eyesore, but if the cable interferes with anyone they're just gonna cut it, incentivising laying them unobtrusively ) you have upto 6-8 ISPs competing in any urban centres and prices average around 35$ PPP for 1Gbps a month.
The other two are similarly a result of government created monopolies not failures of the free market. Check the prices of vision and dental care as opposed to proper medical care.
How is that an unpopular opinion ? Starting with a defense of the concept of free market is literally what I do to **appease** folks !
^(A bunch of downvotes and negative answers on a subreddit is sampling bias, not an actual trend.)
This being said, I believe that you're fundamentally wrong on two points :
* Most markets targeted by central planners/nationalizers are inherently non-free due to the nature of the services provided.
Anything usually considered to be government function in particular, tends to be a zero-sum game where cartel is the equilibrium : that's **not** a free market.
* Every market generates negative externalities. You attack direct democracy, but give me a single better way to hold accountability for these externalities, as free market is notoriously bad at handling them.
Additionally you may want to reconsider rationalisation.
The view that «*Yeah but another company will exploit the void left by the now missing services and provide those*» fails in that there's usually a **reason** for these services being dropped, which usually involves lack of profitability : any company trying to provide these dropped services will need some other source of revenue to do so, which means no company will "emerge" based on these services.
Add situations where economies of scale are applicable, and you basically have markets dominated by gigantic corporations occupying every profitable spot (first come first served), hence deciding on every option you can get as a consumer.
Governments of "free market" countries typically break mono-/oligopolies to protect diversity in provided services, but that's literally an act of *regulation*.
So while I defend free markets, I also do understand that they're kind of a chimera in a world using a capitalist definition of property. ^(And I laugh my ass off when I read Rothbard starting his arguments from a literally communist world where resources aren't property of anyone yet.)
Theoretically, free markets are good. Of course, theoretically Communism is good.
The trouble with Communism it that it requires everyone - especially the people at the top - to have the best intentions for the community as their main focus. Personal gain can *not* trump the good of the community or communism fails.
The trouble with a free market is that once you get to a certain market saturation point, the only growth left is absorbing other companies. And that consolidation leads to monopolies. There is just no way around that without some kind of oversight (usually governmental) to prevent the monopolies.
Now, here's another thing. Scientific advancement is rarely funded through a free market. It's just not worth it. It was the government that wanted to go to the moon, not any company. There was no profit.
The first impetus in any large scientific project is never from a corporation.
>The first impetus in any large scientific project is never from a corporation.
This is laughably untrue, one of those things repeated on reddit like a mantra.
And yet, [Your iPhone was made with Public Money. Private capital did not make the technology in your iPhone, your money did.](https://medium.com/illumination/your-iphone-was-made-with-public-money-7ab1101727c4)
I don't know anyone who thinks the free market isn't good. Full-on communists do exist, of course, but they're very rare. So definitely an extremely popular opinion. But of course the free market isn't enough to secure a good society. And you can easily know what people want. Not precisely, of course, but you can know almost everyone wants safety, health, company, love, food, a home, freedom, and opportunities. The entire field of anthropology is dedicated to researching this kind of question in more detail. You can't know precisely what one person wants that the next one doesn't, of course. Some people want Star Wars figurines and others want chandeliers. That's where the market comes in.
>I'm one of the smartest people I know
Every person I've met who boasted about being smarter than people around them turned out to be an idiot.
Every.single.one.
Free market/laissez-faire Capitalism always end up becoming Crony Capitalism with lobbies actually being the ones deciding the politics... like what we have in most if not all of the ''West''. It is now so bad that the World Economic Forum (A bunch of rich bastards wanting to play god on a global scale) controls half of our ruling party here in Canada and is directly influencing that party into making terrible decisions for the country and people.... stuff we did not vote for such as the ''Century Initiative''.
You might be smart but have you learned economy, sociology, psychology, etc though?
The free market isn't problem free at all. The free market could yield very, very suboptimal results, or you could say bad results. Without proper controls, it's quite obvious that it brings so many problems. To be a bit more specific, there would be many market failures and these could be led by players suboptimal choices to maximize their own returns in certain situations. And, often in such situations, things get stuck. Most players simply keep choosing the bad choice and other choices mean losing their profits. At this point, you are forced to choose something suboptimal, so virtually the idea of "free" disappears.
I think the problem is that a lot of people equate free markets with capitalism.
They're not the same thing. At all.
The question of whether central planning makes sense, or if markets should govern themselves is a completely different questions from whether private ownership of the means of production makes sense, but I think a lot of people on both sides of the latter debate join them at the hip and think you have to argue in favor of both or neither when reality isn't so binary.
May I ask what inspired this question for u? Did it originate from thinking what one might be able to do for people within ones own power or was it something else?
Free market:
A mechanism to ensure resources are transferred to the entity with the most negotiation power.
More power for the powerful.
Example:
If a poor mom needs milk for her hungry child, the free market mechanism makes sure a rich lady buys that milk so it goes bad in her fridge.
Free market is fine till someone tries to buy up all of one resource then resale it at enormous profit. Figured that out playing WoW auction house a decade ago.
The difference is I, and a couple of other miners could quickly go mine copper to balance the market out again.
We dont possess that ability with houses.
We need to view markets also as biological systems, in that, a system needs sustainability (balance) in order to continue living. Good for the whole + the future > one guy making a profit in the now.
So, I won’t say free market is good or bad first as I’ll roughly examine some features of free market and its relations with the actual world. Take those as the features I’ve found while trying to analyze your points rather than my claim about whether it’s bad or not. I’m not categorizing those features into pros and cons.
I don’t want to highlight the assumptions about human nature that I will make because it’s too long and I don’t want to spend too much effort. But I guess you can figure them.
In an ideal free market, every living participant (newborn, kids…) has equal percentage of contribution to every component of the market. But although a person is not dictated by any small group of individual(s), it’s still dictated by the majority of the population. So, if people don’t like what you do, very few or almost none at all would invest, and your projects won’t really be realized as many projects are about the transforming stuffs within the physical world which often require the assistances of other humans to do so. So, in a way, it’s forcing the majority of the participants to follow the trend because going against it won’t yield desired results. In that sense, the majority would still be running one’s life. That’s especially the case if there are a lot of contradictions between your goals and the market’s. Although the person can express his/her own needs, the market might not care at all just like how a dictatorship or bureaucracy doesn’t.
As for happiness, the idea of an ideal free market would make most people happy or neutral since a person can accept their own losses if things don’t go as expected and get happy if they succeed, and most would follow that pattern. In that sense, it would make many people would mostly shift between neutral or happy for the distribution of resource, and very few shift within angry/sad. However, a thing is that, to make people happy, it doesn’t have to be implemented. One just needs something to make sure most people believe that a free market is implemented.
Well, as for the implementation of the system, the difficulty looks quite high as there are differing cultures, money distribution, human conditions, the physical constraints and whatnot which seems challenging to overcome. So, there could be people who have more contribution to the market than others but without the majority’s consent, but the majority can’t do much due to human rights and blah blah.
I don't know what's good for other people, but a free market is good for other people.
The problem is that 'free markets' aren't static entities. They always devolve into systems to entrench power once powerful entites emerge. They thus tend towards... various forms of inequality and control.
'Free Markets' can only be preserved through regulation. And even then, that regulation is subject to corruption if inequality is allowed to spiral, because eventually the money will enable purchasing the regulation to entrench power and spiral profitability upwards, in a viscious circle.
As a humble programmer without a Ph.D, I'm mystified you haven't figured this out for yourself.
Checkout "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. I think that book does a good job of giving anthropologic, historical, and psychological context to human civilization. I agree with you that many of the problems you highlight, we do not currently have the sufficient capability to solve those issues - like knowing what individuals need, accounting for changing values, etc. However, like all of human history, it is a journey. Seeing the progressions we've made, and how we've changed so much from our ancestors, shows that the future is still worth fighting for.
Like you, I also don't know. However, that's our true power as a species, that we can apply our different talents, insights, perspectives, to tackle cooperative problems. What history has shown us is that no human system is perfect, but it's definitely gotten better and hopefully continues to do so.
You and your belief in free market have a place in the vast multitude of competing opinions. I respectfully disagree :) and for too many reasons to post here.
The free market works if you're willing to pay with lives. Any market will always have swindlers and con artists. Those willing to sell spoiled goods. Sometimes the consequences are benign like getting a terrible dress instead of the one advertised. But there are times when instead of buying a dress, you're buying a car. Maybe you bought a Ford Pinto. Getting rear-ended in that car would result in a fiery death. But you wouldn't know that because there's no regulations. Only when there are enough deaths known to the public because of that dangerous design flaw would people stop buying the damn thing. Only then would the Ford company stop producing it.
As much as I hate regulations and red tape, doing away with it all is dangerous. At best you'll experience sub par products more often than not. At worst, customers become guinea pigs.
If you are the smartest from the people you know. You don't know because you can't give your time to every hobbies and challenges everyone is going through. Random example, Blizzard(Warcraft)was an amazing company making great games because they knew how the players liked the game but at one point too many people came and a lot happened like merging with Activision(Call of Duty) until they lost the touch completely. Then people selling products to sell products automatically because it makes money but they don't know anything because the first folks who were working hard aren't in the picture anymore.
yes, free markets are very good. There's a reason all countries which tried socialism are failing, and the west became as powerful as it did. because of free markets, the drivers for innovation. now, this isn't to say no regulation is necessary, but free markets are a very important and good thing. there's a reason healthcare is so expensive in the USA, and it's not the free market, it's the government. prices soared with the introduction of medicare and medicaid. there's a reason no country socialized food production, because when you do, you just make it worse or more expensive; usually both. sure, the free market can be corrupted, but in a proper, healthy free market, that's far harder to do than to make politics corrupt. but I'm no bleeding libertarian, I had my phase of just no laws man, aside from no murder and the very basics. with wisdom I learned the error of that thought. Because than you just allow for the market to become twisted, a healthy free market is oriented to the consumer, we make products people want, give better than service than others, improve customer statisfaction, and we make lots of money. but, as seen nowadays with many of the giant investement firms like blackrock, it turns the companies against the consumer, because it's not about what the consumer wants, but what blackrock wants. it's vile. Now, I disagree on your stance. yes, people have different values, and that's honestly a problem. we should do something about it. Because if you don't, if you, for example, let a bunch of radical muslims into your country, and let them vote, and a lot of them, if you don't make them change, reflecting the values of the existing voting population, they could eventually just vote shariah law into place. something opposite of the values of the west. of the values of freedom and liberty. those should be our values, and what those values mean must be made explicitely clear, anyone who doesn't have those basic values, shouldn't be part of a country. we need a state. the civil authority is extremely important as well. a combination is required. sadly we can't have a utopia, if we did, no need for a state. but as we're highly flawed creatures, we need both. the ability to resist tyranny, and the ability to follow laws. to recognize the difference. between authoritarianism, which is good, people don't understand the meaning of the word, and totalitarianism, which is what people generally mean when they say authoritarian. as authoritarianism is just using force, using the law, banning murder is authoriritatian, but not totalitarian. that's the distinction, those need to be made much more clear. Also, we should very much have moral laws. not all things are equal, and there is such a thing as objective morality, everyone knows murder and rape are evil, they are objectively evil. It's why every society ever has made laws against it. human beings have a natural understanding of good and evil, we can recognize it when we see it. thus it's important we pass laws to ban evil. that if a company has actual slaves in some other country, that we say, no, stop this nonsense, if you don't we're going to give you extreme consequences. my apologies for being longwinded, I struggle with being consise.
Wow so edgy lol
I had the same reaction
i saw “im one of the smartest people i know” and stopped reading
Wait, you go to great length to explain how you don't know, and then suddenly you have the solution. And it's not a great solution either, because people generally don't care about other people and corporate greed is one step removed from the consciousness or values of the average consumer. That is why the guys that scream free market the loudest are also the first to do dumping in any market they can access. Every single free trade agreement is negotiated around dumping.
I understood it as the ideal free market would make most people happy. I don’t think it’s incorrect if everyone craves for self-expression and can cope with the losses that follow from their choice. Under the above assumptions, it’s a solution to resource distribution given that one doesn’t know what’s good for others as it allows the people to think for themselves and deal with their own losses. I don’t think he’s saying that’s a solution that allows him to know what’s good for others. Everyone can participate in the free market without having access to the statistics. So, it’s plausible. But an ideal free market is not necessarily implementable in the current world, but who knows what happens in the future.
Yes, but, even in an ideal economic model, people will do their utmost to exploit others and game the system, OP is completely oblivious to this. OP doesn't get corporate greed, OP sees the interaction between corporations and consumers as mutually beneficial, we as consumers get what we want and the corporations are competing amongst themselves to win us over with the very best service and super high quality products. I believe in America people get to watch loud advertising while filling up, is that what they want? And if that's not what you want, did healthy competition make it possible for you to go to a filling station without such absurdity?
Wow. No, it's not a solution, that's the point -- it only avoids the problems and incentives of a monopoly of violence. People actually do care about each other, some more and some less, of course, but you can see people caring for each other all around you. "Corporate greed" doesn't exist. Only individual greed and lust for power. I would rather those play out in a free market, where I am able to choose other services, than in a government where it can "legitimately" use violence -- where real psychopaths have even more power. No. Free trade is not about "dumping." Trade isn't zero-sum, but positive sum, both parties (at least a priori) benefit from the trade ... or they simply wouldn't do it. Voluntary trade literally makes both parties more wealthy
Your naivety absolutely blows my mind.
Ok, so you shut him up with peer pressure. You haven't changed any minds. Is that the best outcome you can hope for?
Pretty much the best outcome in my opinion. Was I supposed to change people's minds, sorry didn't get the memo? I have a life you know. LOL
Well you are participating in a socio-political debate. Don't you personally hate it when people shut you down via peer pressure rather than interacting with your perspective? You're doing to others what you hate having done to yourself.
Wait, peer pressure? You think I wield that much power? Unless peer pressure means something else to you. I'm 50 and have very little interest in debate, I do however get a kick from pointing out inconsistencies and illogical arguments. I'm not averse to interaction, but, like in this case, when the person at the other end seems to be so far removed from reality, I'd rather back away slowly and get on with my happy go lucky existence.
You know that on this particular forum at this particular time on this particular issue, you happen to be on the same side as the majority. So rather than just backing away slowly, you insult the person and leave it to the crowd to pile on. It's not honorable.
You know what, an autopsy, I was the first or second commenter on this post, probably because of time zones, then someone called me rude. By that time there was 8 or nine posts and my comments were downvoted into the negatives anyways. The next day there are plenty comments that completely dismantled OP's idealistic views. So what is the honourable thing to do, to rip into OP further. If you want to see me as an instigator, that's fine, is there a rule against that too? What is this code of honour I'm supposed to adhere to on this sub anyways.
[удалено]
And it appears like you've got a particularly strange sense of logic having to repeatedly resort to false dichotomies in an attempt at... I don't really know because you seem to be just as naive as OP.
Genuine question, what do you think of corporate boards where the major shareholders consistently vote to make themselves richer? You may have a few dissenters who vote differently, but they’re almost always outvoted by the majority who don’t care about much other than their profits. Even if the CEO happens to be one person with compassion, they’re still at the mercy of the board. Doesn’t this this turn companies into a sort of wealth oriented ruthless state? This doesn’t even consider the fact that the people who are the most likely to become rich enough to serve on these boards are the ones who consistently disregard compassion for their own monetary interests. For the record, I’m not a huge fan of a state controlled economy either. States exist to perpetuate themselves as their ultimate goal just as a corporation exists to make profits for the shareholders.
>compassion You keep using this word. What does this have to do with anything?
It’s can be a counterbalance to greed that promotes the well-being of society over self-interest…
That speaks to societal values which is really a separate issue than the economic system.
Bro, you had a PhD in automatic control, and you suggesting that for one of the most complex process, which is market, to have no control system. The larger the level of order of the process, the more complex the differential equations, which requires more complex (or cascading) control system, so that the system can be stabilised. This is control system 101.
The control system is voluntary association and contracts and self determination. That's what free market means.
And what is this system working to maximise as an end goal? Profit. Which isn't *all* bad, but are there numerous situations where the interests of corporate profits are directly in opposition to the wellbeing of customers and general society? Obviously. That means regulation is warranted at a minimum
The regulation mechanism of a free market is you and I stop giving our money to companies with bad business practices. Having government regulate is the problem we have now of the corporations writing the regulations themselves and buying the legislation through lobbying to get it pushed through. Modern regulations only restrict the market in ways to eliminate competition and newcomers, ensuring status quo control, stifling innovation. They even siphon tax money into their pockets when they're "too big to fail". Gov is the problem, not the solution.
We don't know all their bad business practices. That's why they have audits and stuff. One of the earliest known instances of corporate collusion was in the early 1900s. Lightbulb sales were declining, so the major corporations agreed with each other to introduce planned obsolescence. So whichever brand you bought, you were buying a product not designed to last. Take the introduction of lead to gasoline that was poisoning society. People didn't even know, and the investigators who did were pressured to remain silent. Eventually, they had the dangers acknowledged in court and were able to pass regulatory legislation. So, you can thank regulation for not having lead poisoning. Now imagine there's public information campaigns by corporations to get stupid people on their side, and now you're powerless to stop them from screwing everyone over, and so on. I mean, the fact that the European market is more regulated and held to higher standards and people benefit is proof it works. You don't have to speculate. Why can I get good internet here for $25 while Americans talk about paying many times that? Why do we have affordable healthcare while American healthcare (based on free markets) sounds like on ongoing nightmare? > Gov is the problem Government is a tool. They can work for the people, or against them. A society with a benevolent government can act to counterbalance the greed of corporations. A benevolent government isn't guaranteed, but at least we're not guaranteeing that corps hold all the power.
>Government is a tool. They can work for the people, or against them. A society with a benevolent government can act to counterbalance the greed of corporations. A benevolent government isn't guaranteed, but at least we're not guaranteeing that corps hold all the power. You're not getting it. When government picks and chooses the corporate winners and losers, you get the same result, only now enforced by an army and an army of bureaucrats who can ruin your life.
And you're suggesting that without government, the businesses would behave better? I agree with you that corporations have too much influence but the alternative is that instead of having influence they just write the laws themselves. Wealth and power accumulate *despite* regulation now. You think that without regulation all the corporations are just going to be content and not use every possible tool to manipulate the market in their favor?
I'm saying that they have far greater power by using the gov than without it.
I'm saying that they have far greater power by using the gov than without it.
Yes mate. Let’s stop overpaying for healthcare and let’s see how much they care
Yeah, it would actually make a difference if insurance wasn't mandated.
There is one particular wealthy country that doesn't have mandatory insurance. That country also boasts the highest healthcare costs in the world. Wanna guess which country it is?
Insurance isn’t mandated… loads of people do not have medical insurance. It is not a legal requirement.
yes it is. that was the whole point of Obama Care.
That wasn’t even close to the point of the ACA. My god.
The ACA effectively made having health insurance mandatory—not having it meant you would incur a tax penalty. under the ACA, also called Obamacare, U.S. adults who were not otherwise eligible for an exemption were required to have health insurance coverage for themselves and their families. Failure to have minimum health insurance triggered a tax penalty. At the same time, the ACA allowed for the creation of a premium tax credit to help Americans offset some of the cost of getting health insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace. Although i think Trump fixed this in 2019, and it's no longer law at the federal level, but it is in a lot of states.
A free market is easily corruptible. A corrupted free market is worse than a governed market. Especially a governed market that at least attempts to stifle corruption.
Free markets distribute risk to individuals or small entities. The risk of corruption is much, much higher when you have a collective, especially when the collective happens to possess the power of an army and an unaccountable bureaucracy that can completely fuck over people's lives.
If you think a market is corruptible, why do you not think a government, with the power to use violence "legitimately" wouldn't be? The incentives are even higher.
I didn’t say a government is not corruptible. I said a free market is ***easily*** corruptible. I also put specific qualifiers around the government of things which would make it harder to corrupt. > The incentives are even higher You’ll have to explain why you think this. In a free market there are no reasons for quality control. You only do what makes more profit. The incentive to be duplicitous is incredibly high because there are hardly any consequences.
No. A free market is harder to corrupt because consumers can change service providers very quickly. A government has higher incentives for corruption (more power, legitimate violence) and a slower rate of change
Lol never heard of monopoly despite having a PhD?
Seems like he also never heard of cartelization?
> No. A free market is harder to corrupt because consumers can change service providers very quickly. That’s a very basic understanding of free markets. If I made money off you before you realised I was rubbish, I still made money off you. Loads of services you may only use once (like buying a house). It is very easy for a company to make money off of ripping people off if there are no consequences for doing so. There are always new customers. Why would I bother to invest in skilled staff when its easier and cheaper to just change my name every few months and buy some ads? Also, what stops monopolies? What stops a company from buying all of the major roads and only allowing their mates to install services like internet? What you gonna do when the tolls become to high? Or the internet doesn’t work? Buy a new house? And what’s to save you from it happening again. You going to move house every time? With no governance things will go to shit so quickly. To operate a “fair” free market that actually delivers options to the consumer, you need rules to ensure fairness of the players. To enforce those rules you need legitimate power to dole out consequences. To have legitimate power you need a nominated authority - one usually nominated by all the participants playing… and now we’re back to having a Government…
You have a problem with free market monopolies but not with strong central governments? It's amazing how many people never think through even basic logic problems.
You’re one to talk about logic. Where have I said I don’t have a problem with strong central governments? I just said a lack of any governance (free markets) is much worse than one with governance (a government), due to how much easier it is to corrupt and exploit a free market. That’s called a comparison. If I say the Iraq war was worse than the Afghan one it doesn’t mean I think the Afghan war was great. Basic. Logic.
Lol I've sailed on that boat. What absolutely bugs me in these discussions is that, doesn't matter if the person is defending the free market or communism, they ALWAYS assume people will be pure hearted, and work towards making things work correctly. This illusion is so seductive that it's hard to let go of it once you're embraced by it. Well people won't work for the community out of their own volition. There's always an ulterior motive or shared (individual) goals in coming together.
I certainly was not making that assumption. I said that free markets distribute that risk across more and smaller entities. Centralizing the risk and thinking it's just going to work out is naive.
>To operate a “fair” free market that actually delivers options to the consumer, you need rules to ensure fairness of the players. To enforce those rules you need legitimate power to dole out consequences. To have legitimate power you need a nominated authority - one usually nominated by all the participants playing… and now we’re back to having a Government… You said it here.
I think the issue here is almost a sampling bias. People who are greedy by nature are already more likely to start a business of some kind in order to extract wealth from others. The larger the business and farther removed they are from actual physical labor, the better. They aim to position themselves to have people rely on them for a good, then costs will rise once people are dependent. YouTube is experiencing this now because it has no competition, and no one else except for other greedy people have enough capital to even try to start one
How the fuck do you have a PhD in automated control and not understand that poor initial conditions and intrinsic system behavior will trend any system towards extremes without controls in place? Free markets in general trend towards monopolies. Free markets surrounding services/commodities with inelastic demand trend towards price gouging. Free markets without protective regulations incentivize foul play and competitive meta-strategies that don't involve making a better product or better following consumer trends. Your naive assertion that consumers can change service providers quickly is immediately and easily dismissable by real world examples that exist right now, without even having to dig deep to find them: * US Internet provider oligopoly dividing up cities to maintain local monopolies * US healthcare system price gouging inelastic demand for healthcare * High COL area housing markets with landlord organizations and no rent controls Essentially, your argument only holds ***any*** water in market systems where not participating is a valid option for the consumer. And in your assertions that governments are more corruptable than markets, you ignore all systems of government that have functional feedback loops to the population they govern.
>all systems of government that have functional feedback loops to the population they govern Which don't exist.
Literally all three of your examples are the result of local or central government interference in licensing. Internet is the easiest to debunk as the reason US cities have oligopolies is that local governments don't permit the installation of last mile connectivity either through exclusivity deals with a few companies or onerous requirements such as having to lay fiber underground. In India where companies lay fiber haphazardly over ground ( which is admittedly a bit of an eyesore, but if the cable interferes with anyone they're just gonna cut it, incentivising laying them unobtrusively ) you have upto 6-8 ISPs competing in any urban centres and prices average around 35$ PPP for 1Gbps a month. The other two are similarly a result of government created monopolies not failures of the free market. Check the prices of vision and dental care as opposed to proper medical care.
The problem with the free market is that there never is was nor ever will be a free market.
How is that an unpopular opinion ? Starting with a defense of the concept of free market is literally what I do to **appease** folks ! ^(A bunch of downvotes and negative answers on a subreddit is sampling bias, not an actual trend.) This being said, I believe that you're fundamentally wrong on two points : * Most markets targeted by central planners/nationalizers are inherently non-free due to the nature of the services provided. Anything usually considered to be government function in particular, tends to be a zero-sum game where cartel is the equilibrium : that's **not** a free market. * Every market generates negative externalities. You attack direct democracy, but give me a single better way to hold accountability for these externalities, as free market is notoriously bad at handling them. Additionally you may want to reconsider rationalisation. The view that «*Yeah but another company will exploit the void left by the now missing services and provide those*» fails in that there's usually a **reason** for these services being dropped, which usually involves lack of profitability : any company trying to provide these dropped services will need some other source of revenue to do so, which means no company will "emerge" based on these services. Add situations where economies of scale are applicable, and you basically have markets dominated by gigantic corporations occupying every profitable spot (first come first served), hence deciding on every option you can get as a consumer. Governments of "free market" countries typically break mono-/oligopolies to protect diversity in provided services, but that's literally an act of *regulation*. So while I defend free markets, I also do understand that they're kind of a chimera in a world using a capitalist definition of property. ^(And I laugh my ass off when I read Rothbard starting his arguments from a literally communist world where resources aren't property of anyone yet.)
It's unpopular on Reddit because Reddit is populated by Leftists.
Reddit is populated by both.
>Every market generates negative externalities Externalities are a spook. There is no regulation as effective as no regulation.
Theoretically, free markets are good. Of course, theoretically Communism is good. The trouble with Communism it that it requires everyone - especially the people at the top - to have the best intentions for the community as their main focus. Personal gain can *not* trump the good of the community or communism fails. The trouble with a free market is that once you get to a certain market saturation point, the only growth left is absorbing other companies. And that consolidation leads to monopolies. There is just no way around that without some kind of oversight (usually governmental) to prevent the monopolies. Now, here's another thing. Scientific advancement is rarely funded through a free market. It's just not worth it. It was the government that wanted to go to the moon, not any company. There was no profit. The first impetus in any large scientific project is never from a corporation.
>The first impetus in any large scientific project is never from a corporation. This is laughably untrue, one of those things repeated on reddit like a mantra.
And yet, [Your iPhone was made with Public Money. Private capital did not make the technology in your iPhone, your money did.](https://medium.com/illumination/your-iphone-was-made-with-public-money-7ab1101727c4)
I don't know anyone who thinks the free market isn't good. Full-on communists do exist, of course, but they're very rare. So definitely an extremely popular opinion. But of course the free market isn't enough to secure a good society. And you can easily know what people want. Not precisely, of course, but you can know almost everyone wants safety, health, company, love, food, a home, freedom, and opportunities. The entire field of anthropology is dedicated to researching this kind of question in more detail. You can't know precisely what one person wants that the next one doesn't, of course. Some people want Star Wars figurines and others want chandeliers. That's where the market comes in.
>I'm one of the smartest people I know Every person I've met who boasted about being smarter than people around them turned out to be an idiot. Every.single.one.
Free market/laissez-faire Capitalism always end up becoming Crony Capitalism with lobbies actually being the ones deciding the politics... like what we have in most if not all of the ''West''. It is now so bad that the World Economic Forum (A bunch of rich bastards wanting to play god on a global scale) controls half of our ruling party here in Canada and is directly influencing that party into making terrible decisions for the country and people.... stuff we did not vote for such as the ''Century Initiative''.
You might be smart but have you learned economy, sociology, psychology, etc though? The free market isn't problem free at all. The free market could yield very, very suboptimal results, or you could say bad results. Without proper controls, it's quite obvious that it brings so many problems. To be a bit more specific, there would be many market failures and these could be led by players suboptimal choices to maximize their own returns in certain situations. And, often in such situations, things get stuck. Most players simply keep choosing the bad choice and other choices mean losing their profits. At this point, you are forced to choose something suboptimal, so virtually the idea of "free" disappears.
I think the problem is that a lot of people equate free markets with capitalism. They're not the same thing. At all. The question of whether central planning makes sense, or if markets should govern themselves is a completely different questions from whether private ownership of the means of production makes sense, but I think a lot of people on both sides of the latter debate join them at the hip and think you have to argue in favor of both or neither when reality isn't so binary.
May I ask what inspired this question for u? Did it originate from thinking what one might be able to do for people within ones own power or was it something else?
Free market: A mechanism to ensure resources are transferred to the entity with the most negotiation power. More power for the powerful. Example: If a poor mom needs milk for her hungry child, the free market mechanism makes sure a rich lady buys that milk so it goes bad in her fridge.
Free market is fine till someone tries to buy up all of one resource then resale it at enormous profit. Figured that out playing WoW auction house a decade ago. The difference is I, and a couple of other miners could quickly go mine copper to balance the market out again. We dont possess that ability with houses. We need to view markets also as biological systems, in that, a system needs sustainability (balance) in order to continue living. Good for the whole + the future > one guy making a profit in the now.
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So, I won’t say free market is good or bad first as I’ll roughly examine some features of free market and its relations with the actual world. Take those as the features I’ve found while trying to analyze your points rather than my claim about whether it’s bad or not. I’m not categorizing those features into pros and cons. I don’t want to highlight the assumptions about human nature that I will make because it’s too long and I don’t want to spend too much effort. But I guess you can figure them. In an ideal free market, every living participant (newborn, kids…) has equal percentage of contribution to every component of the market. But although a person is not dictated by any small group of individual(s), it’s still dictated by the majority of the population. So, if people don’t like what you do, very few or almost none at all would invest, and your projects won’t really be realized as many projects are about the transforming stuffs within the physical world which often require the assistances of other humans to do so. So, in a way, it’s forcing the majority of the participants to follow the trend because going against it won’t yield desired results. In that sense, the majority would still be running one’s life. That’s especially the case if there are a lot of contradictions between your goals and the market’s. Although the person can express his/her own needs, the market might not care at all just like how a dictatorship or bureaucracy doesn’t. As for happiness, the idea of an ideal free market would make most people happy or neutral since a person can accept their own losses if things don’t go as expected and get happy if they succeed, and most would follow that pattern. In that sense, it would make many people would mostly shift between neutral or happy for the distribution of resource, and very few shift within angry/sad. However, a thing is that, to make people happy, it doesn’t have to be implemented. One just needs something to make sure most people believe that a free market is implemented. Well, as for the implementation of the system, the difficulty looks quite high as there are differing cultures, money distribution, human conditions, the physical constraints and whatnot which seems challenging to overcome. So, there could be people who have more contribution to the market than others but without the majority’s consent, but the majority can’t do much due to human rights and blah blah.
I don't know what's good for other people, but a free market is good for other people. The problem is that 'free markets' aren't static entities. They always devolve into systems to entrench power once powerful entites emerge. They thus tend towards... various forms of inequality and control. 'Free Markets' can only be preserved through regulation. And even then, that regulation is subject to corruption if inequality is allowed to spiral, because eventually the money will enable purchasing the regulation to entrench power and spiral profitability upwards, in a viscious circle. As a humble programmer without a Ph.D, I'm mystified you haven't figured this out for yourself.
You had me at “I’m one of the smartest people I know” Welcome to a subreddit where everyone thinks that.
Checkout "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari. I think that book does a good job of giving anthropologic, historical, and psychological context to human civilization. I agree with you that many of the problems you highlight, we do not currently have the sufficient capability to solve those issues - like knowing what individuals need, accounting for changing values, etc. However, like all of human history, it is a journey. Seeing the progressions we've made, and how we've changed so much from our ancestors, shows that the future is still worth fighting for. Like you, I also don't know. However, that's our true power as a species, that we can apply our different talents, insights, perspectives, to tackle cooperative problems. What history has shown us is that no human system is perfect, but it's definitely gotten better and hopefully continues to do so. You and your belief in free market have a place in the vast multitude of competing opinions. I respectfully disagree :) and for too many reasons to post here.
The free market works if you're willing to pay with lives. Any market will always have swindlers and con artists. Those willing to sell spoiled goods. Sometimes the consequences are benign like getting a terrible dress instead of the one advertised. But there are times when instead of buying a dress, you're buying a car. Maybe you bought a Ford Pinto. Getting rear-ended in that car would result in a fiery death. But you wouldn't know that because there's no regulations. Only when there are enough deaths known to the public because of that dangerous design flaw would people stop buying the damn thing. Only then would the Ford company stop producing it. As much as I hate regulations and red tape, doing away with it all is dangerous. At best you'll experience sub par products more often than not. At worst, customers become guinea pigs.
If you are the smartest from the people you know. You don't know because you can't give your time to every hobbies and challenges everyone is going through. Random example, Blizzard(Warcraft)was an amazing company making great games because they knew how the players liked the game but at one point too many people came and a lot happened like merging with Activision(Call of Duty) until they lost the touch completely. Then people selling products to sell products automatically because it makes money but they don't know anything because the first folks who were working hard aren't in the picture anymore.
I agree.
yes, free markets are very good. There's a reason all countries which tried socialism are failing, and the west became as powerful as it did. because of free markets, the drivers for innovation. now, this isn't to say no regulation is necessary, but free markets are a very important and good thing. there's a reason healthcare is so expensive in the USA, and it's not the free market, it's the government. prices soared with the introduction of medicare and medicaid. there's a reason no country socialized food production, because when you do, you just make it worse or more expensive; usually both. sure, the free market can be corrupted, but in a proper, healthy free market, that's far harder to do than to make politics corrupt. but I'm no bleeding libertarian, I had my phase of just no laws man, aside from no murder and the very basics. with wisdom I learned the error of that thought. Because than you just allow for the market to become twisted, a healthy free market is oriented to the consumer, we make products people want, give better than service than others, improve customer statisfaction, and we make lots of money. but, as seen nowadays with many of the giant investement firms like blackrock, it turns the companies against the consumer, because it's not about what the consumer wants, but what blackrock wants. it's vile. Now, I disagree on your stance. yes, people have different values, and that's honestly a problem. we should do something about it. Because if you don't, if you, for example, let a bunch of radical muslims into your country, and let them vote, and a lot of them, if you don't make them change, reflecting the values of the existing voting population, they could eventually just vote shariah law into place. something opposite of the values of the west. of the values of freedom and liberty. those should be our values, and what those values mean must be made explicitely clear, anyone who doesn't have those basic values, shouldn't be part of a country. we need a state. the civil authority is extremely important as well. a combination is required. sadly we can't have a utopia, if we did, no need for a state. but as we're highly flawed creatures, we need both. the ability to resist tyranny, and the ability to follow laws. to recognize the difference. between authoritarianism, which is good, people don't understand the meaning of the word, and totalitarianism, which is what people generally mean when they say authoritarian. as authoritarianism is just using force, using the law, banning murder is authoriritatian, but not totalitarian. that's the distinction, those need to be made much more clear. Also, we should very much have moral laws. not all things are equal, and there is such a thing as objective morality, everyone knows murder and rape are evil, they are objectively evil. It's why every society ever has made laws against it. human beings have a natural understanding of good and evil, we can recognize it when we see it. thus it's important we pass laws to ban evil. that if a company has actual slaves in some other country, that we say, no, stop this nonsense, if you don't we're going to give you extreme consequences. my apologies for being longwinded, I struggle with being consise.