4 ms·

I'm so glad the free market is working so well for Health Care and the Internet.

• humanrebar 11y ago
  Why do you think either are free markets? They're both heavily regulated.
  • shmerl 11y ago
    What's worse, many of them are monopolies (which is also a non free market). However they are far from sufficiently regulated (which monopolies should be). Otherwise data caps rip off would have been illegal to begin with.
  • dredmorbius 11y ago
    The question isn't free markets, but effective ones which serve society. Effective regulation is what makes markets. Economists far more generally speak of competitive markets, which carry numerous requirements, of which neither healthcare nor Internet / communications generally satisfy. Which is how they came to be regulated in the first place.
    • DanielBMarkham 11y ago
      I think the language itself here is a problem. Effective regulation is what makes markets. More specifically, free and open markets work wonders -- but dominant players seek unfair advantage to eliminate the free and open market almost as soon as it starts working. Some regulation is required to keep the market free and open to all participants, especially as leading players actively change the rules as they gather more resources. But the critical point is that those same players are far more likely to use regulation itself as an unfair advantage as they are anything else. Government is the biggest stick in the room, after all. So yes, free and open markets work, and yes, regulation is required to keep them working. But regulations do not make markets any more than speed limits create the interstate trucking system.
• dawnbreez 11y ago
  Because making healthcare mandatory by law is a free market, and so is having local monopolies on internet access. You sound an awful lot like the people who ask for tighter gun laws after a shooting in a gun-free zone.
  • nyae 11y ago
    Please don't make that argument about gun-free zones. In what world can we expect a person bent on mass homicide to respect municipal ordinance? Shooter: "Oh this sign says no guns? Darn, guess I'll abandon my murder spree then." You're not serious right? Or maybe you just haven't yet explained what you really meant?
    • jabgrabdthrow 11y ago
      The analogy is roughly, 1) gov. makes law 2) markets acts opposite way as law intended 3) consumer requests more laws. "The no gun zone law didn't work, let's make the no gun zone bigger" vs "The local ISP monopoly law backfired, let's let the government invent more rules for ISPs"
    • dawnbreez 11y ago
      We're on the same page. I was poking fun at the parent comment for exactly what you're poking fun at me for.
• jabgrabdthrow 11y ago
  Oddly those are my two of my three go-to examples of government intervention fucking the consumer...