11 ms·

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this beha

That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.

wyager 10y ago
> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century, even if we ignore government-granted monopolies via restricted land grants and patents.
- skummetmaelk 10y ago
  At least to me it looks like making the market more "free" by means of deregulation would only exacerbate the problems mentioned above.
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    Free market != deregulation
    - bobwaycott 10y ago
      Sadly, it often does in the realm of public discourse as directed by politicians and the average voter who engages.
  - sova 10y ago
    Making the market "monopoly and oligopoly free" by regulation, as a synopsis.
- mikeyouse 10y ago
  This is exactly the same argument people make in favor of socialism..
  - wyager 10y ago
    The thing is, societies that were close to ideal free market capitalism have done extremely well, whereas societies that were close to ideal socialism have generally done very poorly (in the long term). On account of local linearity, I think it's probably OK to use societies that were almost like what is proposed to judge the proposal. The US isn't even close to a free market (although it used to be very close), so I don't think the current performance of the US economy is a reasonable basis on which to judge free markets. Similarly, many people used countries that were barely socialist to judge socialism, which is also a bad idea.
    - michaelmrose 10y ago
      When has a close to ideal free market existed?
- socialist_coder 10y ago
  How would you know? Just because it's never been truly tested in reality doesn't mean we can't stop and think about the situation. We know what corporations do when they are given a choice (they choose profits over anything else) and we know that consumers will choose low prices over everything else as well. So, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that this will result in consolidation, economies of scale, and eventually monopolies. Exactly what is already happening. In a "free market", what is going to prevent this? Every actor here is acting in their best interest. What could possibly change their behavior other than the government telling them to?
  - valuearb 10y ago
    Where has economies of scale hurt? ISPs are a special case because regulations make it difficult or impossible for competitors to run cable. But economies of scale turned cars, PCs, consumer electronics, air travel, etc, from rich peoples play toys into affordable products for the masses. As consolidation hit all those industries their products merely got cheaper and in most cases, far better.
    - arrosenberg 10y ago
      Walmart. Walmart has destroyed thousands of businesses. Now you can argue the consumer got lower prices, but low prices don't matter when no one has money to afford them. Additionally, those economies of scale produced cheap, disposable, polluting goods that have an engineered lifetime so that customers have to keep buying the same appliance (or whatever) over and over. The question isn't when economies of scale hurt, that's a loaded question. The question is "when does consolidation no longer benefit the consumer?". I would argue many, many industries have reached this point, with ISPs being the most obvious one, but there are many examples (like the syringe one given above) where a business you've never heard of silently corners the market through consolidation and trust building.
      - valuearb 10y ago
        Walmart has been a huge boon to the middle class. It's inarguable that consumers got lower prices, substantially lower prices. That's increased their standard of living. You can argue that Walmart hurt the standard of living of the Americans (less than 1% of US employees) who actually work for it. But that ignores the fact that the smaller competitors didn't pay much better, and never had a stock option plan, so the pay difference was marginal while the customer benefit was massive. Walmart big advantage wasn't labor costs, it was scale and inventory management from day one. And it's products are as good or better as the competitors. I hate Walmart, hate shopping there, but when I have to I'm always struck by how good the products are and how amazing the prices are.
- goatlover 10y ago
  There were powerful monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th century like U.S. Steel and Standard Oil that the government broke up.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    Always found it interesting that the middle class in the US grew immensely wealthier during the period US Steel and Standard Oil were "monopolies".
    - arrosenberg 10y ago
      How do you figure? Most historians credit the rise of the middle class to the post-war boom in the 50s. Standard Oil and US Steel were broken up during the Roosevelt and Taft administrations in the early 20th century.
      - valuearb 10y ago
        When JD Rockefeller was growing up, the average American rode a horse (if lucky), never traveled more than a few miles from home, few had even been on a train. Sailing ships were the main and dangerous form of sea transport. 95% of Americans worked brutal farm labor jobs. Homes were lit by candle and whale oil, and heated with firewood. By the time Standard Oil was broken up, railroads were everywhere, steel ships ruled the sea, cars roamed the roads. Homes were lit by electricity. Energy consumption had skyrocketed because the costs (esp. the cost of oil) had plummeted. Labor saving devices increased productivity and the standard of living, and were made possible by cheaper steel as well as cheaper energy.
        antod 10y ago
        And the same thing happened in other countries without Standard Oil and US Steel monopolies.
        code_duck 10y ago
        That's great, but I don't see why you credit that to those companies being monopolies. There's no reason to think these positive things wouldn't have occurred for consumers just the same if there was more healthy competition in the steel and petroleum market. That just happens to be the technological change that was sweeping the world at the time. It reminds me of Microsoft receiving credit for computers becoming pervasive and useful in everyday life, as if they deserve special recognition, or thanks, for brutally clawing their way to the top of a very profitable industry and ruthlessly suppressing competition, even when it meant scuttling superior technology. Clearly someone else would have made an OS for home and small business computing if Microsoft didn't.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century We know exactly because of that. That there's the theoretical free market and the "really existing" one, and the really existing one is exactly what we get in practice if the big players get their way.
- tim333 10y ago
  >We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century Hong Kong is often held up as a fairly free market that has worked well. The government does get involved in health care and the like but commerce is pretty free. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/hong-kong-is-worlds-freest-economy-us-slips-on-freedom-rank.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/hong-kong-is-worlds-freest-ec...
JackFr 10y ago
> What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. That seems like the opposite of a solution. For such a system to work one has to believe that that the regulatory apparatus is staffed with monks who are unaffected by the temptations of wealth, power and vanity that other humans are subject to and that 'regulatory capture' isn't a real thing. Further that the price mechanism as an information channel is worthless, and that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development will remain at at least the same levels we enjoy now.
- acdha 10y ago
  You're acting like rules and oversight don't exist. Regulatory capture is a real problem but that means you need to take measures to prevent it, not give up on the concept — just as the threat of embezzlement doesn't mean we gave up on banking.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, regulations aren't perfect. Yes, regulatory capture is a problem. Neither of those things is a reason to not have regulations. >>that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development What really hurts efficiency and technological development is monopolies. A company that is a monopoly has very little reason to innovate. We see this all over America with Internet Service Providers. They only improve their service levels if they fear competition (like what happened with Google Fiber).
  - valuearb 10y ago
    ISPs is an anecdote, economies of scale in most business means products are much cheaper if provided by large companies, so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale? The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.
    - eberkund 10y ago
Qwertious 10y ago
'People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.' Don't call it the free market. Call it what it is: COMPETITION. "Free market" implies "I can do what I want", but frankly we don't WANT people to be free to pull anti-competitive shenanigans. Competition is the priority, not "the free market".
- ericHosick 10y ago
  > "Free market" implies "I can do what I want" I always though free implied free from non-consensual acts. It's not much of a free market if your actions are non-consensual (1). (1) Defining what makes an action consensual is difficult but doable.
  - masklinn 10y ago
    "Consent or die" is not a choice, but on free market it is.
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    That's the American libertarian definition.
  - jaredklewis 10y ago
    Difficult indeed. An ordinary American internet user consents to countless pages of legalese in adhesion and other unread contracts (TOSs, privacy policies and so on) everyday day. These days, every website, piece of software, digital service or product comes with pages upon pages of contracts to which the user must consent to even walk in the door. Reading all of them is easily a full time job. So, no one has coerced anyone into anything, just a bunch of consenting parties in theory. In practice, getting consumers to throw away their rights and consent to stridently anti-competitive behavior by companies seems kind of easy. Taken in the sense of an economy of mutual consent, "free market" is too low a bar to hop over. I can see why people don't think that the barebones style of "free market" is very free.
noir_lord 10y ago
> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. I've joked for years that the end stage of capitalism is "one company selling you oxygen". Turns out someone else had that idea back in the 1920's and there is a 'sci-fi' book based on the premise.
- LoonyBalloony 10y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U
sanderjd 10y ago
This is just one of those definition things where the common amateur usage of terms differs from their meaning amongst professionals in the relevant field. The common understanding of "free market" seems to be synonymous with "unregulated market", but that's not how economists use the term.
- nebabyte 10y ago
  Which matters a hell of a lot more than those professionals' opinion, as unfortunately democracy's current models rely far more on what the amateur 'baseline' knowledge is and not 'what the professionals know'. As the professionals are probably fine bellowing off their ivory towers so they can later go doen as "having been right" rather than actually attempting to change things (except Lessig who iirc tried with a PAC), I don't think relying on them will get you anywhere. Better to analyze what the people think and why, and work to improve that baseline, than ignore it. (Or come up with an alternative model of democracy which does privilege 'professional known' information with minimal corruption risk somehow.)
Clubber 10y ago
The end state of free market (as in free of government regulation, not free to compete) is monopoly. Capitalist societies understand that and regulate to ensure freedom to compete. Europe is much better at this than the US.
- ende 10y ago
  Incorrect. Monopolies do not naturally occur in most markets (with a few exceptions). The barriers to entry that create monopolies arise largely from regulatory capture. Some level of regulation is often necessary, but devising regimes that don't favor early entrants is very difficult. Nobody does this well; neither the US nor Europe.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Monopolies do not naturally occur in most market They naturally occur in markets with network externalities, which are quite common.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    They do if a company is able to do anything but make and sell products. The end goal of any company is to become monopoly.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    Often times, companies in the US lobby for regulation that adds barrier to entry. Of course economies of scale greatly contribute to barrier to entry, forcing an entrant to have large volume to even compete. I've read where large companies sell products cheaper than competitors can buy them wholesale. Once there are a few large competitors, mergers happen resulting in monopoly or near monopoly. Of course industries like food service don't have monopolies, but they don't pay very well. They are also geographically restricted. I don't really care about those companies, they don't contribute much to the middle class. Google is an effective monopoly, Amazon is certainly headed that way. Facebook is pretty close. Microsoft would be except the rare occurrence of someone writing a free operating system that was very good at the dawn of the internet age. Airlines are effective monopolies in their selective hubs. Monsanto certainly. They don't have to be the last company standing to show monopolistic tendencies in my mind. Microsoft wasn't technically a monopoly in the 90s, but it might as well have been.
tim333 10y ago
The problem in this particular case seems not to be too much freedom to buy and sell things but overreach by the courts. If some syringe supplier slips stuff into the small print that they will be the only supplier for ever after then the legal system should refuse to enforce that as is probably the case in most places outside the US.
- BoiledCabbage 10y ago
  > the legal system should refuse to enforce that What you're asking for is the opposite is the opposite of what you're stating the problem is. The courts doing nothing but enforcing contracts is expected. Asking for the courts to step in to say "while legal this isn't right and won't be enforced" is asking for 'more reach' by the courts.
  - tim333 10y ago
    Ok, I didn't put it very well but the solution to the courts protecting the syringe makers monopoly is for the government to change the law to disallow such things. A lot of these kind of things like business process patents seem to start with a court judgement and then need legislation to fix.
mcv 10y ago
Freedom takes work to protect. An unregulated market is not necessarily the same as a free market. Or maybe no market is unregulated, and the real choice is between a market regulated for the common good and in the interest of freedom, or one regulated for the interest of specific players on that market.

wyager 10y ago

> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century, even if we ignore government-granted monopolies via restricted land grants and patents.

skummetmaelk 10y ago
At least to me it looks like making the market more "free" by means of deregulation would only exacerbate the problems mentioned above.
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  Free market != deregulation
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    Sadly, it often does in the realm of public discourse as directed by politicians and the average voter who engages.
- sova 10y ago
  Making the market "monopoly and oligopoly free" by regulation, as a synopsis.
mikeyouse 10y ago
This is exactly the same argument people make in favor of socialism..
- wyager 10y ago
  The thing is, societies that were close to ideal free market capitalism have done extremely well, whereas societies that were close to ideal socialism have generally done very poorly (in the long term). On account of local linearity, I think it's probably OK to use societies that were almost like what is proposed to judge the proposal. The US isn't even close to a free market (although it used to be very close), so I don't think the current performance of the US economy is a reasonable basis on which to judge free markets. Similarly, many people used countries that were barely socialist to judge socialism, which is also a bad idea.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    When has a close to ideal free market existed?
socialist_coder 10y ago
How would you know? Just because it's never been truly tested in reality doesn't mean we can't stop and think about the situation. We know what corporations do when they are given a choice (they choose profits over anything else) and we know that consumers will choose low prices over everything else as well. So, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that this will result in consolidation, economies of scale, and eventually monopolies. Exactly what is already happening. In a "free market", what is going to prevent this? Every actor here is acting in their best interest. What could possibly change their behavior other than the government telling them to?
- valuearb 10y ago
  Where has economies of scale hurt? ISPs are a special case because regulations make it difficult or impossible for competitors to run cable. But economies of scale turned cars, PCs, consumer electronics, air travel, etc, from rich peoples play toys into affordable products for the masses. As consolidation hit all those industries their products merely got cheaper and in most cases, far better.
  - arrosenberg 10y ago
    Walmart. Walmart has destroyed thousands of businesses. Now you can argue the consumer got lower prices, but low prices don't matter when no one has money to afford them. Additionally, those economies of scale produced cheap, disposable, polluting goods that have an engineered lifetime so that customers have to keep buying the same appliance (or whatever) over and over. The question isn't when economies of scale hurt, that's a loaded question. The question is "when does consolidation no longer benefit the consumer?". I would argue many, many industries have reached this point, with ISPs being the most obvious one, but there are many examples (like the syringe one given above) where a business you've never heard of silently corners the market through consolidation and trust building.
    - valuearb 10y ago
      Walmart has been a huge boon to the middle class. It's inarguable that consumers got lower prices, substantially lower prices. That's increased their standard of living. You can argue that Walmart hurt the standard of living of the Americans (less than 1% of US employees) who actually work for it. But that ignores the fact that the smaller competitors didn't pay much better, and never had a stock option plan, so the pay difference was marginal while the customer benefit was massive. Walmart big advantage wasn't labor costs, it was scale and inventory management from day one. And it's products are as good or better as the competitors. I hate Walmart, hate shopping there, but when I have to I'm always struck by how good the products are and how amazing the prices are.
goatlover 10y ago
There were powerful monopolies in the late 19th and early 20th century like U.S. Steel and Standard Oil that the government broke up.
- valuearb 10y ago
  Always found it interesting that the middle class in the US grew immensely wealthier during the period US Steel and Standard Oil were "monopolies".
  - arrosenberg 10y ago
    How do you figure? Most historians credit the rise of the middle class to the post-war boom in the 50s. Standard Oil and US Steel were broken up during the Roosevelt and Taft administrations in the early 20th century.
    - valuearb 10y ago
      When JD Rockefeller was growing up, the average American rode a horse (if lucky), never traveled more than a few miles from home, few had even been on a train. Sailing ships were the main and dangerous form of sea transport. 95% of Americans worked brutal farm labor jobs. Homes were lit by candle and whale oil, and heated with firewood. By the time Standard Oil was broken up, railroads were everywhere, steel ships ruled the sea, cars roamed the roads. Homes were lit by electricity. Energy consumption had skyrocketed because the costs (esp. the cost of oil) had plummeted. Labor saving devices increased productivity and the standard of living, and were made possible by cheaper steel as well as cheaper energy.
      - antod 10y ago
        And the same thing happened in other countries without Standard Oil and US Steel monopolies.
      - code_duck 10y ago
        That's great, but I don't see why you credit that to those companies being monopolies. There's no reason to think these positive things wouldn't have occurred for consumers just the same if there was more healthy competition in the steel and petroleum market. That just happens to be the technological change that was sweeping the world at the time. It reminds me of Microsoft receiving credit for computers becoming pervasive and useful in everyday life, as if they deserve special recognition, or thanks, for brutally clawing their way to the top of a very profitable industry and ruthlessly suppressing competition, even when it meant scuttling superior technology. Clearly someone else would have made an OS for home and small business computing if Microsoft didn't.
coldtea 10y ago
>How would you know? We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century We know exactly because of that. That there's the theoretical free market and the "really existing" one, and the really existing one is exactly what we get in practice if the big players get their way.
tim333 10y ago
>We haven't had anything approaching a free market since the early 20th century Hong Kong is often held up as a fairly free market that has worked well. The government does get involved in health care and the like but commerce is pretty free. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/hong-kong-is-worlds-freest-economy-us-slips-on-freedom-rank.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/01/hong-kong-is-worlds-freest-ec...

JackFr 10y ago

> What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. That seems like the opposite of a solution. For such a system to work one has to believe that that the regulatory apparatus is staffed with monks who are unaffected by the temptations of wealth, power and vanity that other humans are subject to and that 'regulatory capture' isn't a real thing. Further that the price mechanism as an information channel is worthless, and that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development will remain at at least the same levels we enjoy now.

acdha 10y ago
You're acting like rules and oversight don't exist. Regulatory capture is a real problem but that means you need to take measures to prevent it, not give up on the concept — just as the threat of embezzlement doesn't mean we gave up on banking.
enraged_camel 10y ago
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, regulations aren't perfect. Yes, regulatory capture is a problem. Neither of those things is a reason to not have regulations. >>that corrupting it with noise will have negligable effect on efficiency and technological development What really hurts efficiency and technological development is monopolies. A company that is a monopoly has very little reason to innovate. We see this all over America with Internet Service Providers. They only improve their service levels if they fear competition (like what happened with Google Fiber).
- valuearb 10y ago
  ISPs is an anecdote, economies of scale in most business means products are much cheaper if provided by large companies, so where is the cutoff between "monopolies" and simple economies of scale? The author claims 6 seed companies are worse than hundreds of seed companies, but doesn't give a single fact to support that claim.
  - eberkund 10y ago

Qwertious 10y ago

'People need to stop wishing for the "free" market. The term is abused by orators and manipulators who prey on peoples desire for a market which is free in the spirit of the word, and deliver to them a market which is technically "free" and horrible.' Don't call it the free market. Call it what it is: COMPETITION. "Free market" implies "I can do what I want", but frankly we don't WANT people to be free to pull anti-competitive shenanigans. Competition is the priority, not "the free market".

ericHosick 10y ago
> "Free market" implies "I can do what I want" I always though free implied free from non-consensual acts. It's not much of a free market if your actions are non-consensual (1). (1) Defining what makes an action consensual is difficult but doable.
- masklinn 10y ago
  "Consent or die" is not a choice, but on free market it is.
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  That's the American libertarian definition.
- jaredklewis 10y ago
  Difficult indeed. An ordinary American internet user consents to countless pages of legalese in adhesion and other unread contracts (TOSs, privacy policies and so on) everyday day. These days, every website, piece of software, digital service or product comes with pages upon pages of contracts to which the user must consent to even walk in the door. Reading all of them is easily a full time job. So, no one has coerced anyone into anything, just a bunch of consenting parties in theory. In practice, getting consumers to throw away their rights and consent to stridently anti-competitive behavior by companies seems kind of easy. Taken in the sense of an economy of mutual consent, "free market" is too low a bar to hop over. I can see why people don't think that the barebones style of "free market" is very free.

noir_lord 10y ago

> That's the thing though, that is exactly what a late stage "free market" looks like. What you need is a heavily regulated market that prevents exactly this behaviour. I've joked for years that the end stage of capitalism is "one company selling you oxygen". Turns out someone else had that idea back in the 1920's and there is a 'sci-fi' book based on the premise.

LoonyBalloony 10y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SiabeNR_q0U

sanderjd 10y ago

This is just one of those definition things where the common amateur usage of terms differs from their meaning amongst professionals in the relevant field. The common understanding of "free market" seems to be synonymous with "unregulated market", but that's not how economists use the term.

nebabyte 10y ago
Which matters a hell of a lot more than those professionals' opinion, as unfortunately democracy's current models rely far more on what the amateur 'baseline' knowledge is and not 'what the professionals know'. As the professionals are probably fine bellowing off their ivory towers so they can later go doen as "having been right" rather than actually attempting to change things (except Lessig who iirc tried with a PAC), I don't think relying on them will get you anywhere. Better to analyze what the people think and why, and work to improve that baseline, than ignore it. (Or come up with an alternative model of democracy which does privilege 'professional known' information with minimal corruption risk somehow.)

Clubber 10y ago

The end state of free market (as in free of government regulation, not free to compete) is monopoly. Capitalist societies understand that and regulate to ensure freedom to compete. Europe is much better at this than the US.

ende 10y ago
Incorrect. Monopolies do not naturally occur in most markets (with a few exceptions). The barriers to entry that create monopolies arise largely from regulatory capture. Some level of regulation is often necessary, but devising regimes that don't favor early entrants is very difficult. Nobody does this well; neither the US nor Europe.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Monopolies do not naturally occur in most market They naturally occur in markets with network externalities, which are quite common.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  They do if a company is able to do anything but make and sell products. The end goal of any company is to become monopoly.
- Clubber 10y ago
  Often times, companies in the US lobby for regulation that adds barrier to entry. Of course economies of scale greatly contribute to barrier to entry, forcing an entrant to have large volume to even compete. I've read where large companies sell products cheaper than competitors can buy them wholesale. Once there are a few large competitors, mergers happen resulting in monopoly or near monopoly. Of course industries like food service don't have monopolies, but they don't pay very well. They are also geographically restricted. I don't really care about those companies, they don't contribute much to the middle class. Google is an effective monopoly, Amazon is certainly headed that way. Facebook is pretty close. Microsoft would be except the rare occurrence of someone writing a free operating system that was very good at the dawn of the internet age. Airlines are effective monopolies in their selective hubs. Monsanto certainly. They don't have to be the last company standing to show monopolistic tendencies in my mind. Microsoft wasn't technically a monopoly in the 90s, but it might as well have been.

tim333 10y ago

The problem in this particular case seems not to be too much freedom to buy and sell things but overreach by the courts. If some syringe supplier slips stuff into the small print that they will be the only supplier for ever after then the legal system should refuse to enforce that as is probably the case in most places outside the US.

BoiledCabbage 10y ago
> the legal system should refuse to enforce that What you're asking for is the opposite is the opposite of what you're stating the problem is. The courts doing nothing but enforcing contracts is expected. Asking for the courts to step in to say "while legal this isn't right and won't be enforced" is asking for 'more reach' by the courts.
- tim333 10y ago
  Ok, I didn't put it very well but the solution to the courts protecting the syringe makers monopoly is for the government to change the law to disallow such things. A lot of these kind of things like business process patents seem to start with a court judgement and then need legislation to fix.

mcv 10y ago

Freedom takes work to protect. An unregulated market is not necessarily the same as a free market. Or maybe no market is unregulated, and the real choice is between a market regulated for the common good and in the interest of freedom, or one regulated for the interest of specific players on that market.