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Not to get too ideological, but libertarian proponents tend to claim that businesses with poor service will just naturally be outcompeted. Those who go as far a

Not to get too ideological, but libertarian proponents tend to claim that businesses with poor service will just naturally be outcompeted. Those who go as far as to suggest that fraud need not be prosecuted by statist regulation will say that dishonest companies will have bad reputations and customers will naturally not patronize them. Makes me wonder what trying to build such a reputation system would look in practice. Consumer Reports manages to hang on as a publication but not everyone consults it, and there are so many more review sites these days of varying quality, impacted by AI/outsourced copywriting. And when you deal with an industry as dominated by a few monolithic oligopolies like health insurance or phone service- what is more bad publicity going to do to AT&T? You can’t even boycott that, especially when they lock in customers to prevent them from easily switching away.

klabb3 2y ago
Right you could go against the rest of the world and continue with privatized care. I’m sure it could work much better if free markets were enforced, but it’s very much the opposite. US markets are extremely entrenched, especially in highly regulated sectors. Markets are cornered by PE, by acquisitions, by frivolous lawsuits, any means possible to get dominance. And there’s no functioning anti-trust law, so you get the opposite of free markets. Even Milton Friedman claimed that governments have a necessary obligation to interfere to preserve free markets.
- BirAdam 2y ago
  “Interfere to preserve free markets” is odd. The entire issue in the USA is regulatory capture and bribery of the government. The government has such tremendous lucre from taxing and such authoritarian power that every entity that can exploit it will exploit it. The government’s money and power is the one ring. The idea that the government should interfere is the entire problem. Just things like preventing insurance, a financial product, from being sold across the nation or around the world gives insurers undue power. Don’t get me wrong, in this case, breach of contract is a legal issue and the insurance company should be prosecuted, but Milton Friedman was off on this one by a mile. A government that has been purchased by banks, insurance companies, drug companies, and defense companies cannot act in the market fairly and therefore should not act at all.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    It's not a free market if you're forced to participate in it. Which we all are, by virtue of being alive.
    - BirAdam 2y ago
      No one chooses to be alive, but to be alive is to struggle to survive. Were it not a market, it would be compulsion. If it were neither of those it’d be hunting and gathering. There is no free lunch. We have and we live by effort.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        (Shrug) The whole idea behind health care -- and civilization in general -- is to ameliorate that struggle. "Insurance" is simply the wrong model when dealing with claims we will all eventually have to file.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    So what can the average citizen do about it? Start funding Consumer Reports and other watchdogs until they have literal armies of lawyers and mercenaries? Stage acts of consumer-led industrial sabotage until these corporations are driven out of business until presumably better actors rise up in the market? To go back to my original post, neither business reputation nor customer boycotts would seem to have any effect. So if you were to deny the government the ability to regulate, then all you’re left with is vigilantism.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    The state, in liberal democracies, with its "ultimate power", is not really supposed to be a single entity like the One Ring, but one with powers separated into three branches (like the 3 Elven Rings ??). So, if they were all purchased, how did it happen ?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- FredPret 2y ago
  This is more than a free market vs state argument. This type of thing is a characteristic of any large system - there will be gaps. (I’m trying to explain but not defend these gaps). Unfortunately, some things only work if it’s a large system, like insurance, government, and AT&T. For instance, in countries with state health care, there are also serious failings like this kind and of other kinds. For example, by keeping prices low, some of these systems restrict supply. This means long waiting times & lower rates of innovation. Here in Canada, we have government insurance, not health care, and though it’s been good to me, it’s not perfect. Central control is not some silver bullet, and neither is the free market.
  - Apocryphon 2y ago
    Just wondering, is the dire state of Canadian phone providers (Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc.) a product of government regulation or private cartelization?
    - FredPret 2y ago
      Probably both? If there were more of them, and each one was smaller, the situation would likely be better. But below a certain size, the effectiveness of an ISP drops off.

klabb3 2y ago

Right you could go against the rest of the world and continue with privatized care. I’m sure it could work much better if free markets were enforced, but it’s very much the opposite. US markets are extremely entrenched, especially in highly regulated sectors. Markets are cornered by PE, by acquisitions, by frivolous lawsuits, any means possible to get dominance. And there’s no functioning anti-trust law, so you get the opposite of free markets. Even Milton Friedman claimed that governments have a necessary obligation to interfere to preserve free markets.

BirAdam 2y ago
“Interfere to preserve free markets” is odd. The entire issue in the USA is regulatory capture and bribery of the government. The government has such tremendous lucre from taxing and such authoritarian power that every entity that can exploit it will exploit it. The government’s money and power is the one ring. The idea that the government should interfere is the entire problem. Just things like preventing insurance, a financial product, from being sold across the nation or around the world gives insurers undue power. Don’t get me wrong, in this case, breach of contract is a legal issue and the insurance company should be prosecuted, but Milton Friedman was off on this one by a mile. A government that has been purchased by banks, insurance companies, drug companies, and defense companies cannot act in the market fairly and therefore should not act at all.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  It's not a free market if you're forced to participate in it. Which we all are, by virtue of being alive.
  - BirAdam 2y ago
    No one chooses to be alive, but to be alive is to struggle to survive. Were it not a market, it would be compulsion. If it were neither of those it’d be hunting and gathering. There is no free lunch. We have and we live by effort.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      (Shrug) The whole idea behind health care -- and civilization in general -- is to ameliorate that struggle. "Insurance" is simply the wrong model when dealing with claims we will all eventually have to file.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  So what can the average citizen do about it? Start funding Consumer Reports and other watchdogs until they have literal armies of lawyers and mercenaries? Stage acts of consumer-led industrial sabotage until these corporations are driven out of business until presumably better actors rise up in the market? To go back to my original post, neither business reputation nor customer boycotts would seem to have any effect. So if you were to deny the government the ability to regulate, then all you’re left with is vigilantism.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  The state, in liberal democracies, with its "ultimate power", is not really supposed to be a single entity like the One Ring, but one with powers separated into three branches (like the 3 Elven Rings ??). So, if they were all purchased, how did it happen ?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
FredPret 2y ago
This is more than a free market vs state argument. This type of thing is a characteristic of any large system - there will be gaps. (I’m trying to explain but not defend these gaps). Unfortunately, some things only work if it’s a large system, like insurance, government, and AT&T. For instance, in countries with state health care, there are also serious failings like this kind and of other kinds. For example, by keeping prices low, some of these systems restrict supply. This means long waiting times & lower rates of innovation. Here in Canada, we have government insurance, not health care, and though it’s been good to me, it’s not perfect. Central control is not some silver bullet, and neither is the free market.
- Apocryphon 2y ago
  Just wondering, is the dire state of Canadian phone providers (Bell, Telus, Rogers, etc.) a product of government regulation or private cartelization?
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Probably both? If there were more of them, and each one was smaller, the situation would likely be better. But below a certain size, the effectiveness of an ISP drops off.