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Everything you said is contradicted by reality. Charities exist in the free market. The fee market pushes prices down more than any other system. Items that

• quadrangle 5y ago
  Charities do exist in the free market, yes. They are also a tiny tiny fraction of what's needed to address wider social problems. No charity efforts are comparable to or have the potential to replace something like Social Security and Medicare. > pushes prices down Except in the cases where it doesn't, such as luxury brands that exist to show off how expensive something is or for people to believe something is better because of the higher price — and this phenomenon is widespread throughout tons of aspects of the economy. Brands exist that sell essentially commodities at inflated prices through the power of advertising. > Wealth increases and abounds in a free market. According to the model you believe in, but that model isn't reality. Reality includes the fact that the wealthiest places on the planet (I mean larger societies, not places like off-share tax havens that just cater to the ultra-wealthy) have markets (but not completely free ones) and a history full of grotesque exploitation. The U.S. built it's initial wealth on slavery, genocide, and theft, and the non-free aspects of U.S. corporate behavior is still today a major factor of life. You might indeed be right about wealth in truly free markets. But you don't have any controlled experiment on a society-size scale to even use for evidence since no case like that exists. And applying the ideas from one model to other situations doesn't mean it just becomes the model somehow.