3 ms·
Well waddya know... Looks like sometimes regulations do work better than the invisible hand of the free market. Reality: the invisible hand is simply a fist ma
by lelanthran 3y ago
Well waddya know... Looks like sometimes regulations do work better than the invisible hand of the free market.
Reality: the invisible hand is simply a fist made up of all members of a cartel.
- dotnet00 3y agoThe free market was working, in the sense that there are decent options which don't use egress fees as lock-in. The issue was that the invisible hand is too slow and involves too much chaos when strong network effects (and related lock-in) become involved. Such effects weaken the presumption that competitors can be easily switched to.
- hkt 3y ago> Such effects weaken the presumption that competitors can be easily switched to. Plus, the egress fees were too damn high
- shrubble 3y agoAmazon, Google and Azure are anything but free market; they have been getting subsidies and abatements in the 10s of billions all along.
- mikelitoris 3y agoInvisible hand works in perfect markets which never exist in reality. It is used as a smokescreen by the people with insane amounts of money who can bend the rules to their will, to convince the rest of the people how the economy works. Like most of economics
- graemep 3y agoAdam Smith himself never claimed it was that simple. He also wrote on ethics (and regarded that book as more important IIRC). He also warned that those is the same trade would inevitably conspire against the public.
- lasereyes136 3y agoThat is weird, people taking a body of work out of context to advance their agenda.
- gumby 3y agoThat’s basically all advocates of Adam Smith. I doubt that most of them have even read it — they’d be shocked by what he actually wrote.
- SoftTalker 3y agoOr as John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." I think interpreting this in a modern context, "religious" can be translated as "ethical"
- Lionga 3y agoRegulations work with perfect governments that are all knowing, all powerful and only interested in the good of the people. It is used as a smokescreen by the governments who can (literally) bend the rules to their will, to convince the rest of the people how the economy works. I would say this is ever further from reality than perfect markets. So we probably need both.
- AtlasBarfed 3y agoThe reality of the US Government is that regulations only happen when sufficiently monied interests are diametrically opposed and then some sort of logic sometimes comes out of it. At least the US model often feels the need to produce something that appears sensible on the surface, although usually with gotchas in subsection 14 part C paragraph 2. The EPA, NHTSA, FAA, FCC, SEC, etc go through periods of wax and wane with being undermined, then publicly embarrassed, then reconstructed with legitimate people, then undermined, etc. But they exist and ... eventually ... impose regulation. I have never heard anyone say credibly as a politician to get rid of them, and goddamn are there a lot of corporate forces that want them gone, so as institutions these regulatory agencies have proven themselves. The FDA however ... I'm pretty down on.
- belter 3y agoFinancial markets are some of the most regulated environments anywhere.
- wooque 3y agoInvisible hand works in the free market, unfortunately the free market only exists in theory.