Free markets and democracies are good at a lot of things, but self preservation is NOT one of them -- in fact, if practiced at the extreme, it is basically guar

Free markets and democracies are good at a lot of things, but self preservation is NOT one of them -- in fact, if practiced at the extreme, it is basically guaranteed that a sufficiently large winner-takes-it-all will take over {free-market,democracy} and dismantle it. That's why you need all kinds of checks and balances and regulations.