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I mean, roughly, there's no such thing as an ideal free market, and in all real markets all the ways in which it's not an ideal free market are being exploited

I mean, roughly, there's no such thing as an ideal free market, and in all real markets all the ways in which it's not an ideal free market are being exploited by people to collect the margin. The concept of an ideal free market is promulgated by the same people who are making money off those margins. As far as what you can do about it, you could start with preventing those people from interacting with markets. I leave the mechanism as an exercise for the reader.

imtringued 5y ago
A free market would first require getting rid of all forms of power and so far there have been people who thought about minimizing the most impactful sources of power and pretty much all economists ignore them. What we are doing is the equivalent of looking at a warped mirror e.g. a non free market and declaring that the reflections are not distorted e.g. a free market. A lot of people are scared of living on the streets or feel shame from living off welfare. There is no way these people are going to make long term decisions if their short term needs haven't been met or there is a constant risk that they won't be met tomorrow. This is actually one of the more disgusting parts of Austrian economics. Where a low time preference is basically considered the equivalent of a high IQ. If you have a high time preference you must be some dumb consumerist animal, when the truth is that you barely earn enough money to meet your living expenses which means 100% of your spending must go to consumption. Thirst is more urgent than hunger which is more urgent than shelter which is more urgent than social needs and so on. At some point you are not longer hungry or homeless. The urgency is gone. It would be more accurate to say that time preference is a function of wealth and having your needs met, rather than some intellectual jerk off competition where stupid people are filtered out and smart people end up with all the wealth.

imtringued 5y ago

A free market would first require getting rid of all forms of power and so far there have been people who thought about minimizing the most impactful sources of power and pretty much all economists ignore them. What we are doing is the equivalent of looking at a warped mirror e.g. a non free market and declaring that the reflections are not distorted e.g. a free market. A lot of people are scared of living on the streets or feel shame from living off welfare. There is no way these people are going to make long term decisions if their short term needs haven't been met or there is a constant risk that they won't be met tomorrow. This is actually one of the more disgusting parts of Austrian economics. Where a low time preference is basically considered the equivalent of a high IQ. If you have a high time preference you must be some dumb consumerist animal, when the truth is that you barely earn enough money to meet your living expenses which means 100% of your spending must go to consumption. Thirst is more urgent than hunger which is more urgent than shelter which is more urgent than social needs and so on. At some point you are not longer hungry or homeless. The urgency is gone. It would be more accurate to say that time preference is a function of wealth and having your needs met, rather than some intellectual jerk off competition where stupid people are filtered out and smart people end up with all the wealth.