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The market actually is not very free, because large companies increasingly use their weight to pull off things that smaller companies or individual customers ca
by nine_k 7mo ago
The market actually is not very free, because large companies increasingly use their weight to pull off things that smaller companies or individual customers cannot afford: lobby to obtain preferences, tax exemptions, exclusive deals, other favors that violate or at least skirt the law.
But running a call center overseas is not one of these things.
- justonceokay 7mo agoI cannot understand how any of the things you describe are not free. The government kowtowing to corporations is as free as it gets. No one said that just because the market is free that you personally wouldn’t end up holding the shit end of the stick
- Rury 7mo agoFree markets don't exist, or they only do for a very brief period of time. It's the same fundamental force behind why social hierarchies naturally form, and communism doesn't work in practice. When governments kowtow to corporations, it's the corporations who are then acting as the government. For example, in states like Texas, Alabama, and Wisconsin, laws prohibit automakers from selling vehicles directly to consumers. But these laws only exist because dealer associations wanted and lobbied for them to protect their business. Which is to show that freedom itself isn't a matter of who is kowtowing to whom, but merely whether or not kowtowing is happening whatsoever. If it is, then someone's freedom is being restrained, and said market environment could be argued to not be "free". In fact, this is what Tesla has argued multiple times in court in such states in that these laws are anticompetitive, and violate due process and the commerce clause.
- Terr_ 7mo agoHold up, there are two very different kinds of "free" that pop up, from mutually incompatible ends of a spectrum. In the first, it's a "free" market because everything moves smoothly and efficiently in ways that make economic mathematicians happy. There's perfect information, all transactions and prices and actor-identities are are known, and it's generally assumed there are no monopolies or monopsonies. In the second, individual actors are "free" to construct secret deals with special secret prices, non-disclosure agreements, act anonymously through proxies, etc. At least in US politics, the equivocation is common: Someone appeals to the benefits of the first, while promoting the contradictory mechanics of the second.
- pheaded_while9 7mo agoThe violence of the state makes the market not "free." Unless you want to abstract all the way out: the planet is and always has been run through violent coercion by psycopaths, and, as exampled by reality, they are "free" to do so. But in the sense they mean, the violence of the state precludes a free market. For the record, I do not believe in the validity of money, coercion, usury, violence.
- blks 7mo agoThat what companies do in a free market. They all try to become a monopoly.
- sph 7mo agoYou cannot call it a free market if government lobbying exists and is the primary tool for establishing monopolies. Nor you cannot call it a free market if the government is allowed to favour or penalise one entity or one sector over the other. I know words don't mean anything these days, but there is no angle in which you can call modern economy a free one.
- cherry_tree 7mo ago“a real free market economy just hasn’t been tried” where have I heard that before?
- joquarky 7mo agoAs soon as we admit that humans are easily corrupted, the sooner we can stop finger pointing and start developing systems to mitigate the natural tendency toward corruption.
- cherry_tree 7mo agoIsn’t that free market capitalism? We assume everyone will act in their own best interest and that this results in the most efficient allocation of resources.
- blks 7mo agoThat’s just one way of becoming a monopoly. Is it a free market if there’s antimonopoly agency?
- sph 7mo agoGovernment lobbying is just one way to put a hand on the scale of the market. Legislation, incentives favouring unprofitable endeavours, etc.