> Free markets allow people to organize the way they like. Other systems don't. Free markets are not absolute freedom, and private property still restricts the

> Free markets allow people to organize the way they like. Other systems don't. Free markets are not absolute freedom, and private property still restricts the action of people without money. Poor people can barely do anything because they're too busy trying not to become homeless. The wealthy, on the other hand, can do what they want. That's not a very free system. More free than some Soviet dictatorship, 100%, but I like to think that we can do better. Plenty of coercion occurs under the banner of free market trade - just look at rare metal extraction in Africa, that powers our electronic devices. > Cooperatives are cool and I have nothing against them but there's a reason for them being so few. They go bankrupt more often than other business. They actually don't, they have greater staying power than corporations [1]. There's not many because investors don't want to invest in them due to the nature of their structure, and workers don't typically have the resources to fund their own business. Plus, they're a pretty niche concept, many people haven't heard of them. So once again, people can't organise the way they like because the way people can organise in the market is controlled by capital. > Me neither but trust isn't scalable. On a large ethnically and culturally diverse population it's impossible to have trust. That's a pretty weird thing to say. I hadn't even brought up race. I grew up going to a racially diverse school, had friends of various backgrounds, many of my neighbours and people I've worked with have been of different backgrounds, no issue. Maybe that's just you that doesn't trust people of other backgrounds. > It's good to have choice. Engaging in negotiations can be boring but it's preferred over the tragedy of the commons or attempts social control that always end up being an euphemism for privileges for friends or authoritarian policy. Do you not think that the ultra-wealthy are engaging in privileges for friends or authoritarian policy? They write the laws you must obey! Any system where the primary incentive is in opposition to moral value is less than ideal. If I am incentivised by the profit motive to withhold resources to the needy (see for example: US medical industry, the military-industrial complex withholding "being alive" to foreign citizens) then that's not a particularly moral system because the people least affected by morality will rise to the top. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Longevity_and_resilience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative#Longevity_a...