2 ms·
Im a pretty hard core libertarian and completely agree with what both you and the parent commenter said. In a capitalistic market, natural monopolies and oliga
by lettergram 11y ago
Im a pretty hard core libertarian and completely agree with what both you and the parent commenter said.
In a capitalistic market, natural monopolies and oligarchies will form. So long as competitors can enter (i.e. arent legislated out) of the market there's nothing wrong.
Similarly, forcing businesses that work better at scale to become smaller will increase prices and decrease efficiency. Obviously, this is a somewhat idealized situation, so in reality it's going to be somewhere in between (because companies, governments, and people are all willing to not play "fair" in a market). Being a libertarian, I just error on the side of letting the market decide, as opposed to legislators deciding how the market should be.
- EGreg 11y agoYep. I just see cities and states as a special case of organizations. And the same central planners you're talking about exist also in corporations, unions and other organizations. If you want to let the market drive innovation, the same forces apply within these organizations: if the platform is freely installable by anyone and the barrier to enhancement is low, then it leads to better quality and more freedom for everyone. The same reasons that most people prefer to "just use" gmail, facebook, amazon etc. are the same reasons that people prefer to "just live in" a state and not figure everything out themselves. So the libertarians who envision a world where people pay competing rating agencies, security agencies, firefighting companies etc. face the same challenge as those who want people to use OSS software instead of hosted platforms developed and supported by big companies. The smaller stuff will always be more rinkydink, but the competition will drive expectations of freedom and quality up for everyone, even those using the states / corporations.