4 ms·

Congratulations, you’ve discovered the idea of competition and why it makes the free market better! Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the

by avalys 6y ago

Congratulations, you’ve discovered the idea of competition and why it makes the free market better! Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! Unlike in government, where failure is often rewarded with an increased budget and a chance to try again next year with more money.

duxup 6y ago
I feel like that is too much of a pass for the "free market". I don't buy into the idea that the failures don't count and we just recognize the success.
ptmcc 6y ago
If this were true, companies like Oracle, SAP, Infosys, etc. would have died out a long time ago. They are bureaucratic hellscapes internally that rival even the worst governmental orgs, with even less oversight. We have nothing close to a free market as idealized by libertarians. And whether we should or not is an entirely separate argument.
- avalys 6y ago
  Those companies do have to convince people to keep paying them money, otherwise they would cease to exist. The government is unconstrained by even that requirement.
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Those companies probably aren't going to exist in 100 years, but the U.S. government still will (doubtless even less competent than today.)
dgb23 6y ago
I think you've been down-voted because your statements read like shallow (neo-liberal) propaganda rather than insightful observations. A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. > Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! This isn't generally true and is dependent on what you define as a failure. The private sector is exploiting, polluting and destroying natural resources all over the world even with regulations. Some of it are honest mistakes and ignorance, but much of it are "trade-offs". The general and consistent quality of products and services in prosperous societies is enforced by regulations. Your food is (very) healthy, your houses are solid. Similarly workers are being exploited all over the world. The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. There are also things where the government is just strictly more efficient than markets. Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. They all have two things in common: They are based on collaboration rather than competition and they achieve long-term goals. You see there is a balance here between the short-term gains of the competitive markets and the long-term stability of the collaborative governments and non-profits. As with many things this can be simply observed from nature and evolution. Both competition and collaboration are important strategies of survival.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. But "well functioning" in this context only means something like "efficiently prices externalities" and doesn't require the government to e.g. build housing projects, as opposed to just not passing zoning regulations that make the market price of housing unaffordable to begin with. > The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. This is frequently claimed, but there is a long history of laws being passed requiring something right after the major players in that industry already agreed it was a good idea (and then started lobbying for it instead of against it because it would increase compliance costs for smaller competitors). > Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. I'm inclined to think that these things would happen more often in the private sector if people weren't constantly kept on a treadmill of ever-increasing costs for housing, healthcare and education which require people to work long hours just to survive with no surplus. If more of people's time was their own then they would experiment on their own without need for external funding, and have a surplus of wealth to pool and invest into those types of endeavors. It's what some billionaires do already, but can you imagine how far we would get if the resources of the middle class were allowed to go to that instead of just keeping ahead of artificial scarcity?
  - dgb23 6y ago
    I really like your last thought and I agree with it. Essentially this would increase diversity and just sheer mass of thought, innovation and likely happiness. Mostly on small but sometimes on bigger scales. The getting there part is what many disagree on though. I certainly don't know how and I suspect most people don't really know either.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Almost all of the scarcity comes from purposeful regulation. We limit the supply of housing, we limit the supply of doctors, we give tax incentives for employers to provide low deductible health insurance that makes patients price insensitive and causes costs to balloon etc. The recipients of the money (e.g. landlords/existing homeowners, the AMA, drug companies) lobby hard to keep the status quo, because the money is going to them. So it's not easy to fix, in the sense that it's a political problem to get the change into law, not in the sense that we don't know what to change to fix it.

by avalys 6y ago

duxup 6y ago

I feel like that is too much of a pass for the "free market". I don't buy into the idea that the failures don't count and we just recognize the success.

ptmcc 6y ago

If this were true, companies like Oracle, SAP, Infosys, etc. would have died out a long time ago. They are bureaucratic hellscapes internally that rival even the worst governmental orgs, with even less oversight. We have nothing close to a free market as idealized by libertarians. And whether we should or not is an entirely separate argument.

avalys 6y ago
Those companies do have to convince people to keep paying them money, otherwise they would cease to exist. The government is unconstrained by even that requirement.
baggy_trough 6y ago
Those companies probably aren't going to exist in 100 years, but the U.S. government still will (doubtless even less competent than today.)

dgb23 6y ago

I think you've been down-voted because your statements read like shallow (neo-liberal) propaganda rather than insightful observations. A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. > Failures fail and go away, and what you’re left with are the successful organizations that know how to do things! This isn't generally true and is dependent on what you define as a failure. The private sector is exploiting, polluting and destroying natural resources all over the world even with regulations. Some of it are honest mistakes and ignorance, but much of it are "trade-offs". The general and consistent quality of products and services in prosperous societies is enforced by regulations. Your food is (very) healthy, your houses are solid. Similarly workers are being exploited all over the world. The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. There are also things where the government is just strictly more efficient than markets. Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. They all have two things in common: They are based on collaboration rather than competition and they achieve long-term goals. You see there is a balance here between the short-term gains of the competitive markets and the long-term stability of the collaborative governments and non-profits. As with many things this can be simply observed from nature and evolution. Both competition and collaboration are important strategies of survival.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> A sufficiently well functioning government is necessary for a market to be well functioning and vice versa. But "well functioning" in this context only means something like "efficiently prices externalities" and doesn't require the government to e.g. build housing projects, as opposed to just not passing zoning regulations that make the market price of housing unaffordable to begin with. > The only reason there are places where people are (close to) guaranteed to live decent, free lives is based on decades of activism, unions and governmental action. This is frequently claimed, but there is a long history of laws being passed requiring something right after the major players in that industry already agreed it was a good idea (and then started lobbying for it instead of against it because it would increase compliance costs for smaller competitors). > Mostly projects and services which are very long-term oriented such as education, police, military, infrastructure, public transport, foundational research etc. I'm inclined to think that these things would happen more often in the private sector if people weren't constantly kept on a treadmill of ever-increasing costs for housing, healthcare and education which require people to work long hours just to survive with no surplus. If more of people's time was their own then they would experiment on their own without need for external funding, and have a surplus of wealth to pool and invest into those types of endeavors. It's what some billionaires do already, but can you imagine how far we would get if the resources of the middle class were allowed to go to that instead of just keeping ahead of artificial scarcity?
- dgb23 6y ago
  I really like your last thought and I agree with it. Essentially this would increase diversity and just sheer mass of thought, innovation and likely happiness. Mostly on small but sometimes on bigger scales. The getting there part is what many disagree on though. I certainly don't know how and I suspect most people don't really know either.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Almost all of the scarcity comes from purposeful regulation. We limit the supply of housing, we limit the supply of doctors, we give tax incentives for employers to provide low deductible health insurance that makes patients price insensitive and causes costs to balloon etc. The recipients of the money (e.g. landlords/existing homeowners, the AMA, drug companies) lobby hard to keep the status quo, because the money is going to them. So it's not easy to fix, in the sense that it's a political problem to get the change into law, not in the sense that we don't know what to change to fix it.