Thank you, this is very helpful for understanding your position. I am having trouble putting my thoughts in order to respond. One thing I can say is that I agr

Thank you, this is very helpful for understanding your position. I am having trouble putting my thoughts in order to respond. One thing I can say is that I agree with your criteria for justifiable regulations, I think I (and Elizabeth Warren) just have a much more expansive definition of "harm to a third party". I think a lot of important harm is not captured by metrics like average standard living and economic growth and "innovation", and I was unable to find any correlation between inequality and the Fraser Institute's economic freedom ranking. > There are things like so-called "price gouging" in disaster situations which many people perceive as wrong, but in actuality are a necessary signalling behavior of the market in order to allocate more resources to those areas. Banning such things only results in shortages which _do have_ measurable negative consequences. It doesn't make sense to talk about appropriate market behavior in a disaster situation, which can never be a functioning free market. In a disaster, buyers are forced to buy immediately, they cannot shop around, compare products, and choose not to buy if the price is too high. A key feature of a free market is that nobody is forced to buy or sell. High prices are only an effective signal when there is a low barrier to entry to enter the market, and willingness to pay roughly correlates with need. Neither of these are true in a disaster. This is similar to healthcare, another "market" that by definition cannot be free and should never be treated as such. Participants are coerced into buying, knowledge about quality and price of goods is hidden from buyers, comparison shopping is impossible in an emergency, and ability to pay has nothing to do with need. A market cannot function when many mandatory purchases cost more than many participants' net wealth.