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>learned they can charge insane rates It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always trie

>learned they can charge insane rates It's called "what the market can bear" and it's what corporations with marketing and sales professionals have always tried their best to do; charge as much as you possibly can without losing business. Of course, it only actually works when there is competition, and so the rising prices are kept in check by undercutting competition.... and then, _that_ only works when the undercutting competition is working to the same quality (by a code, ideally) and is subject to the same economic pressures so that it can level out fairly. If the competition is all fresh immigrants with lower CoL, or if the competition is cutting corners, all bets are off. You end up with a race to the bottom, where each individual is trying to be part of a race to the top at the same time... everyone wants more than they're worth, but those who are actually doing the best work still aren't getting what they deserve, lol! A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work, just like any other freedom. It's always been strange to me that Americanism seems to view freedom as the fundamental condition of man, hampered by law; ultimately most freedoms come from rule and order, because they can carve out space for one to enjoy freedoms with far fewer negative consequences.

jack_h 1y ago
> A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work While I am not a free market absolutist, I think your assertion is based on judging negative outcomes of a free market vs the positive intentions of regulations trying to prevent those negative outcomes, i.e. you’re not considering the negative outcomes of regulations. I don’t think any free market advocate would state categorically that they produce perfect results, merely that any attempt to prevent certain negative outcomes through law will produce different negative outcomes elsewhere. For instance regulations tend to incentivize very large corporations to advocate for more regulation as it raises the barrier to new competition entering the market place. Another example would be over burdensome regulations that slow the production of housing which constrains supply and prices a lot of people out of the market. I would have loved to take public transit where I lived a few years ago, but they spent a decade on environmental impact studies while traffic and the environmental impact from it got significantly worse. There’s also a time component where the effects of regulations can take decades or even generations to really play out, but people tend to only remember the well-meaning goal of the regulation if they remember it at all. This tends to be very beneficial for politicians who end up being judged not on outcomes, but intentions.
- dml2135 1y ago
  I think you missed the parent comment’s point. They are not saying that a free market had it’s downsides, but rather that a lassaiz-faire approach often does not even result in a free market, but rather in a market that tends towards monopolization. And a market without competition is not free. In order to have free, competitive markets, you need to have a referee to enforce a common set of rules, like antitrust.
  - jack_h 1y ago
    I didn’t miss their point, I challenged the foundation upon which it rested. You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. Even if I take this as a fact for the sake of argument, it doesn’t nullify my point that judging the intention of political action (antitrust laws to prevent monopolies) against the outcomes of a system (free markets devolve into monopolies) is comparing apples to oranges. You must judge the outcomes of both systems. As I stated in my original reply, regulations can actually lead to monopolies, so the outcomes matter a lot more than their good intentions. If I don’t take your assertion as a fact though[1], then what you’re doing is judging what you believe to be the outcome of a free market with what you believe will prevent that through legislation. This is entirely too theoretical and doesn’t even begin to answer which is a better system. Ultimately we need to understand the actual trade-offs that are being made between these systems in order to select the system with the most desirable characteristics. [1] It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly. This has been a contentious debate in economics for centuries and is absolutely not resolved. People tend to assume a static market and extrapolate into the infinite future, e.g. if a horse drawn carriage manufacturer has 99% market share then will it forever be a monopoly in a broken system or will a fledgling automotive industry dethrone this “monopoly” with a better alternative that is not even a direct competitor? This is a really, really deep subject in either case.
    - dml2135 1y ago
      > You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. No, I am not asserting that. I think the first thing to clear up is our definitions. My main point would be that a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market. I would define a free market not as a market that is free from government interference, but a market in which all of the actors are free to participate on a fair competitive playing field. I think that lassaiz-faire, with the meaning of "hands off" may be a more precise way to describe what you are saying when you say "free market". I think that a fair competitive landscape is ultimately what we want out of markets. I agree that it is bad when government actions interfere with a fair competitive landscape. But it is not inevitable that all goverment actions will do that, and in many cases government action can help rather than hurt. And similarly, plenty of actions by non-government actors can interfere with a fair competitive landscape as well.

jack_h 1y ago

> A free market actually requires a lot of surrounding regulation to work While I am not a free market absolutist, I think your assertion is based on judging negative outcomes of a free market vs the positive intentions of regulations trying to prevent those negative outcomes, i.e. you’re not considering the negative outcomes of regulations. I don’t think any free market advocate would state categorically that they produce perfect results, merely that any attempt to prevent certain negative outcomes through law will produce different negative outcomes elsewhere. For instance regulations tend to incentivize very large corporations to advocate for more regulation as it raises the barrier to new competition entering the market place. Another example would be over burdensome regulations that slow the production of housing which constrains supply and prices a lot of people out of the market. I would have loved to take public transit where I lived a few years ago, but they spent a decade on environmental impact studies while traffic and the environmental impact from it got significantly worse. There’s also a time component where the effects of regulations can take decades or even generations to really play out, but people tend to only remember the well-meaning goal of the regulation if they remember it at all. This tends to be very beneficial for politicians who end up being judged not on outcomes, but intentions.

dml2135 1y ago
I think you missed the parent comment’s point. They are not saying that a free market had it’s downsides, but rather that a lassaiz-faire approach often does not even result in a free market, but rather in a market that tends towards monopolization. And a market without competition is not free. In order to have free, competitive markets, you need to have a referee to enforce a common set of rules, like antitrust.
- jack_h 1y ago
  I didn’t miss their point, I challenged the foundation upon which it rested. You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. Even if I take this as a fact for the sake of argument, it doesn’t nullify my point that judging the intention of political action (antitrust laws to prevent monopolies) against the outcomes of a system (free markets devolve into monopolies) is comparing apples to oranges. You must judge the outcomes of both systems. As I stated in my original reply, regulations can actually lead to monopolies, so the outcomes matter a lot more than their good intentions. If I don’t take your assertion as a fact though[1], then what you’re doing is judging what you believe to be the outcome of a free market with what you believe will prevent that through legislation. This is entirely too theoretical and doesn’t even begin to answer which is a better system. Ultimately we need to understand the actual trade-offs that are being made between these systems in order to select the system with the most desirable characteristics. [1] It is not at all proven that a free market will naturally devolve into a monopoly. This has been a contentious debate in economics for centuries and is absolutely not resolved. People tend to assume a static market and extrapolate into the infinite future, e.g. if a horse drawn carriage manufacturer has 99% market share then will it forever be a monopoly in a broken system or will a fledgling automotive industry dethrone this “monopoly” with a better alternative that is not even a direct competitor? This is a really, really deep subject in either case.
  - dml2135 1y ago
    > You are asserting that a free market is unstable and will inevitably lead to a monopoly. No, I am not asserting that. I think the first thing to clear up is our definitions. My main point would be that a market that is controlled by a monopoly is not a free market. I would define a free market not as a market that is free from government interference, but a market in which all of the actors are free to participate on a fair competitive playing field. I think that lassaiz-faire, with the meaning of "hands off" may be a more precise way to describe what you are saying when you say "free market". I think that a fair competitive landscape is ultimately what we want out of markets. I agree that it is bad when government actions interfere with a fair competitive landscape. But it is not inevitable that all goverment actions will do that, and in many cases government action can help rather than hurt. And similarly, plenty of actions by non-government actors can interfere with a fair competitive landscape as well.