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> Surely, even the most staunch supporter of the free market can admit that at a bare minimum, capitalism in this country is in desperate need of better anti-tr
by KKPMW 7y ago
> Surely, even the most staunch supporter of the free market can admit that at a bare minimum, capitalism in this country is in desperate need of better anti-trust regulation to stop monopolies
Not taking the position, but free market supporters typically point to regulations as the main reason why monopolies exist.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAnd except pure anarchy this mythical free market has never existed and probably never will.
- KKPMW 7y agoI like to think that we are actually living in a pure anarchy. The current state is just where it leads to.
- freethemullet 7y agoFree markets are free to have monopolies.
- fladrif 7y agoOn the flip side regulations are in place to protect the ill-informed consumers (either due to mental capacity or lack of information). I figure consumers enjoy being in their position anyways, they just want something to work without having to worry about any of the details. i.e. Using Salesforce instead of rolling your own solution.
- dredmorbius 7y agoAnd they're somewhere between wrong and disingenuous to do so, though it's an awfully common trope. Contrast the treatment of monopoly in Marshall's Principles (the leading text from the 1880s through the 1940s) -- a full chapter, plus numerous other mentions -- with, say, Hazlitt's One Lesson, where it escapes mention entirely, save a note at the end. Hazlitt's book is corporate propaganda. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.217841/page/n515 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.217841/page/n5... https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.217841/page/n907 https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.217841/page/n9... https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/ https://fee.org/resources/economics-in-one-lesson/ 9full text in one page)
- Gibbon1 7y agoI think Martin Gardner when writing about bad science roughly said unless there are strong countervailing forces orthodoxy eventually becomes a reflection of cultural biases. I feel modern economics is if anything about generating obsequious corporate propaganda.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThat tendency goes way back. To the point of coopting anticorporate texts as corporate propaganda, such as Wealth of Nations.