7 ms·

> selfish ambitions for power or money Free markets are designed around a selfish ambition for making money. You can only make money by pleasing your customers

> selfish ambitions for power or money Free markets are designed around a selfish ambition for making money. You can only make money by pleasing your customers. And hence free markets are the greatest mechanism for prosperity. There's nothing wrong with making money that way.

vkou 2mo ago
How well do free markets resolve basic problems of resource distribution? Like, say, the tragedy of the commons?
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  Free markets do not resolve the tragedy of the commons. The fix is to not have commons. For example, we are running out of fish in the ocean from overfishing. But there's no shortage of cows and chickens, despite massive consumption of them. The former is the commons, the latter is private property.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - nrr 2mo ago
    I fear that this conflates open and closed access with exclusive property rights. It isn't untrue that asserting exclusive property rights on something makes it closed access[0], but there are other mechanisms for achieving closed access of a resource, like enforced regulation. Slightly more formally, an assertion of exclusive property rights is a sufficient condition for something to be closed access, but it isn't necessary. Though, admittedly, that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is. Is it unfettered commerce, consumer protections and suchlike be damned? Is it a system of commerce that ensures equitable access? I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. (Likewise, trading with Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever the in-vogue cryptocurrency is today means that the code makes the rules, and I get to pay for the privilege of having my transactions indelibly entered into the distributed ledger and for the code governing those transactions to be buggy and exploitable. I'm still scratching my head at it.) At the risk of building a strawman here, I'll caution that it's logically inconsistent to expect the state to enforce exclusive rights while also urging that strict regulation of a shared commons is an illegitimate market intervention. -- 0: That is, unless the title holder grants license, but that's a whole other conversation.
    - roenxi 2mo ago
      > I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. It is a minor point I suppose, but this is the other way round. Because Caesar makes the rules you trade certificates that bear his face. It takes vigour and energy on the part of law enforcement to stop people from moving to private currencies.
      - nrr 2mo ago
        I'm unsure that I agree. History has borne out a lot of evidence that people will jump to other means of paying for things in the face of the local currency collapsing, even in the face of amped up (but nonetheless impotent) enforcement.
    - WalterBright 2mo ago
      > that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is Sigh. No need to make up one's own definition. Googling "free market": "A free market is an economic system where prices, wages, and the flow of goods are determined by supply and demand. There is no government control or central planning telling people what to buy, sell, or make. Instead, private choices and voluntary trades drive the economy."
      - nrr 2mo ago
        As it turns out, I'm not making up my own definitions here. The view of a free market being a market with equitable access is attributable to Adam Smith from his Wealth of Nations. He bases his understanding of this freedom on the absence of private rent-seeking and absence of monopoly privilege (though in 1700's vernacular). Henry George in his Progress and Poverty makes similar gestures toward defining a free market this way. Part of the reason why it's important to consider other definitions (and other economic models) is that there is an important result in economics from the 1970's that, more or less, establishes the lack of a guarantee that the demand curve in an aggregate demand model (a macroeconomic model) will slope downward. This makes the aggregate demand model less than useful for a priori arguments about supply and demand in the macro context; they must instead be approached a posteriori. It's also the big reason why I'm uninterested in a colloquial definition that is heavily filtered through von Mises and Friedman.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Are you saying I should have to bid for oxygen rights?
    - roenxi 2mo ago
      You pay market price for oxygen. It just happens to be 0 right now. There isn't any reason in principle that price can't change (eg, if you want to go underwater getting the oxygen will most certainly cost you something, if you want your air at a certain temperature or humidity that costs you too). If we set up a moonbase or something then it might well be that oxygen would cost something. Much like how there isn't any reason you have to pay for food in principle. It could become so cheap and easy to produce, say, bread or cheese that it is available everywhere at no nominal cost. So yes, you should. You already do, realistically.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        If it's zero I'll just buy the entire planets worth of oxygen, please and thank you. That'll be $0.00.
        roenxi 2mo ago
        I'm sure you're just being silly, but ok. Take what you can. That is pretty much literally how it works. I'm not stopping you.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Where can I buy oxygen rights?
        roenxi 2mo ago
        I recommend Amazon. You can buy a tanks of the stuff to call your own if you feel like paying someone something. There'd be specialist companies that do bulk oxygen supplies too, a quick search found things like https://www.dswgascylinder.com/product/liquid-oxygen-trailer/ https://www.dswgascylinder.com/product/liquid-oxygen-trailer.... Not a market I'm familiar with. I suppose I'll just add in postscript; your not going to get much out of the conversation if you don't take it seriously. There are people who make great money selling oxygen. It isn't automatically priced at $0. In some hypothetical world where quality oxygen wasn't just floating around in the atmosphere, people would pay for it in the same way they pay for other essentials like food or water. Paying for water is about as crazy as paying for oxygen, they both basically just turn up out of the atmosphere. And there is precedent for a commons essential good becoming more expensive, food used to be something people just picked up off the ground for free. Or hunted down on unclaimed land.
  - flammafex 2mo ago
    [dead]
scns 2mo ago
> You can only make money by pleasing your customers. Are you sure?
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  Theft is not allowed in a free market.
  - HappMacDonald 2mo ago
    Not allowing theft would be a form of regulation, though ;)
    - WalterBright 2mo ago
      Theft is a criminal offense, which is different from regulation.
      - letmehelpyou 2mo ago
        [dead]
sortoflog 2mo ago
That’s an ideal free market, but do you know of any large economies that actually meet this criteria? Happy customers are optional when you have regulatory capture.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  The US for most of its history. Nothing is ideal. The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is.
  - the_other 2mo ago
    > Nothing is ideal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich#Pacific_Gas_&_Electric_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich#Pacific_Gas_&_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(Bilott_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(Bilott_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737#737_MAX_(MAX_7/8/200/9/10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma
  - sortoflog 2mo ago
    > Nothing is ideal Right, which is why touting oversimplified economic models is likely to be contentious ;) Speaking of which: > The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is. When do you think the US was at its most prosperous? Most would say somewhere in the mid 20th century, which was hardly the least regulated time in its history…
    - WalterBright 2mo ago
shmeeed 2mo ago
>You can only make money by pleasing your customers. If only it were so. Alas, in the real world enshittification, shrinkflation, skimpflation, dark patterns, planned obsolescence, vendor/platform lock-in, rent-seeking, regulatory capture and the like absolutely rule the day, due to a host of free market failures. I don't claim to have a better alternative. But I find your take a bit strange. Are you as a customer satisfied with how all of this is working out?
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  When was the last time you were forced to buy something you didn't want?
  - shmeeed 2mo ago
    Quite recently, actually. The washing machine broke after 18 years. It was a cheap model at the time, but it held up well until the end. I'm under no illusion that the 50% more expensive replacement will last anywhere as long. You know, the old "they just don't build 'em like that anymore" that even the sellers tell you freely. I'd like to buy quality products. For example, I own a coffee machine for which the manufacturer provides spare parts for decades. But I'm not willing to spend 3x for an appliance when there's no realistic expectation to get 2-3x the use of it since it's not economically repairable. So the rational choice is to buy semi-cheap and throw it on the heap when it inevitably breaks sooner than the last one. I hate that game, but I'm not made of money either. Then the TV died. I did some research online and then spend a very disappointing hour browsing a local electronics shop to get a hands-on feel. It's all "smart" shit the software of which will go out of support within 5 years, with dedicated remote buttons advertising streaming services I don't use, too large screens and/or bad build quality, abysmal sound all around, and, not to forget, stuffed full of surveillance and ads. Out of sheer desperation, I got alarmingly close to spending $1.900 for a premium brand 43" that did tick all the boxes - namely, just being a TV that's as good and inobtrusive as the $700 one from 12 years ago. I finally resorted to buying an 7 year old unit from the same premium brand third hand for 1/7 the price. Which in the event turned out to be a really good deal, I admit, but I don't quite think the used market is what we're talking about here. It did not feel at all like the market for new products catered to my preferences. These may be a bit peculiar, but FWIW, I take that's a sentiment quite a few people on HN share: questions about "good dumb TVs" come up every so often, so I'm not alone in this. And don't get me started on printers...
tremon 2mo ago
Free markets are also designed around participants of equal or comparable power. As long as market power is as skewed as it currently is, there are a lot of things wrong with making money that way.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  > Free markets are also designed around participants of equal or comparable power. No, they are not. No matter how big your company is, if customers don't like your product, you are going bust. Small companies regularly replace large ones. See the book "The Innovator's Dilemma".
rmunn 2mo ago
But the example I gave was of politicians seeking power for the sake of making money. Which is entirely different from making it via the free market. I'm very much pro-free-markets, but I don't think that (for example) members of Congress should be exempted from the "no insider trading" rules. There have been multiple cases of politicians (from both major American parties — and I'm sure it happens in other countries too, America is just the one I know about) buying stock in a company that they knew was about to get a lucrative government contract, before that news hit the public. So they benefited financially from their insider position, something that is forbidden to everybody else. That's a market distortion, and benefits nobody but the politicians. That's a good example of the kind of selfish desire for money that I meant, and does not fit the free-market philosophy.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  I don't see seeking political power and using it as free market.

vkou 2mo ago

How well do free markets resolve basic problems of resource distribution? Like, say, the tragedy of the commons?

WalterBright 2mo ago
Free markets do not resolve the tragedy of the commons. The fix is to not have commons. For example, we are running out of fish in the ocean from overfishing. But there's no shortage of cows and chickens, despite massive consumption of them. The former is the commons, the latter is private property.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- nrr 2mo ago
  I fear that this conflates open and closed access with exclusive property rights. It isn't untrue that asserting exclusive property rights on something makes it closed access[0], but there are other mechanisms for achieving closed access of a resource, like enforced regulation. Slightly more formally, an assertion of exclusive property rights is a sufficient condition for something to be closed access, but it isn't necessary. Though, admittedly, that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is. Is it unfettered commerce, consumer protections and suchlike be damned? Is it a system of commerce that ensures equitable access? I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. (Likewise, trading with Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever the in-vogue cryptocurrency is today means that the code makes the rules, and I get to pay for the privilege of having my transactions indelibly entered into the distributed ledger and for the code governing those transactions to be buggy and exploitable. I'm still scratching my head at it.) At the risk of building a strawman here, I'll caution that it's logically inconsistent to expect the state to enforce exclusive rights while also urging that strict regulation of a shared commons is an illegitimate market intervention. -- 0: That is, unless the title holder grants license, but that's a whole other conversation.
  - roenxi 2mo ago
    > I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice. It is a minor point I suppose, but this is the other way round. Because Caesar makes the rules you trade certificates that bear his face. It takes vigour and energy on the part of law enforcement to stop people from moving to private currencies.
    - nrr 2mo ago
      I'm unsure that I agree. History has borne out a lot of evidence that people will jump to other means of paying for things in the face of the local currency collapsing, even in the face of amped up (but nonetheless impotent) enforcement.
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    > that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is Sigh. No need to make up one's own definition. Googling "free market": "A free market is an economic system where prices, wages, and the flow of goods are determined by supply and demand. There is no government control or central planning telling people what to buy, sell, or make. Instead, private choices and voluntary trades drive the economy."
    - nrr 2mo ago
      As it turns out, I'm not making up my own definitions here. The view of a free market being a market with equitable access is attributable to Adam Smith from his Wealth of Nations. He bases his understanding of this freedom on the absence of private rent-seeking and absence of monopoly privilege (though in 1700's vernacular). Henry George in his Progress and Poverty makes similar gestures toward defining a free market this way. Part of the reason why it's important to consider other definitions (and other economic models) is that there is an important result in economics from the 1970's that, more or less, establishes the lack of a guarantee that the demand curve in an aggregate demand model (a macroeconomic model) will slope downward. This makes the aggregate demand model less than useful for a priori arguments about supply and demand in the macro context; they must instead be approached a posteriori. It's also the big reason why I'm uninterested in a colloquial definition that is heavily filtered through von Mises and Friedman.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Are you saying I should have to bid for oxygen rights?
  - roenxi 2mo ago
    You pay market price for oxygen. It just happens to be 0 right now. There isn't any reason in principle that price can't change (eg, if you want to go underwater getting the oxygen will most certainly cost you something, if you want your air at a certain temperature or humidity that costs you too). If we set up a moonbase or something then it might well be that oxygen would cost something. Much like how there isn't any reason you have to pay for food in principle. It could become so cheap and easy to produce, say, bread or cheese that it is available everywhere at no nominal cost. So yes, you should. You already do, realistically.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      If it's zero I'll just buy the entire planets worth of oxygen, please and thank you. That'll be $0.00.
      - roenxi 2mo ago
        I'm sure you're just being silly, but ok. Take what you can. That is pretty much literally how it works. I'm not stopping you.
        inigyou 2mo ago
        Where can I buy oxygen rights?
        roenxi 2mo ago
        I recommend Amazon. You can buy a tanks of the stuff to call your own if you feel like paying someone something. There'd be specialist companies that do bulk oxygen supplies too, a quick search found things like https://www.dswgascylinder.com/product/liquid-oxygen-trailer/ https://www.dswgascylinder.com/product/liquid-oxygen-trailer.... Not a market I'm familiar with. I suppose I'll just add in postscript; your not going to get much out of the conversation if you don't take it seriously. There are people who make great money selling oxygen. It isn't automatically priced at $0. In some hypothetical world where quality oxygen wasn't just floating around in the atmosphere, people would pay for it in the same way they pay for other essentials like food or water. Paying for water is about as crazy as paying for oxygen, they both basically just turn up out of the atmosphere. And there is precedent for a commons essential good becoming more expensive, food used to be something people just picked up off the ground for free. Or hunted down on unclaimed land.
- flammafex 2mo ago
  [dead]

scns 2mo ago

> You can only make money by pleasing your customers. Are you sure?

WalterBright 2mo ago
Theft is not allowed in a free market.
- HappMacDonald 2mo ago
  Not allowing theft would be a form of regulation, though ;)
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    Theft is a criminal offense, which is different from regulation.
    - letmehelpyou 2mo ago
      [dead]

sortoflog 2mo ago

That’s an ideal free market, but do you know of any large economies that actually meet this criteria? Happy customers are optional when you have regulatory capture.

WalterBright 2mo ago
The US for most of its history. Nothing is ideal. The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is.
- the_other 2mo ago
  > Nothing is ideal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich#Pacific_Gas_&_Electric_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich#Pacific_Gas_&_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(Bilott_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_(Bilott_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737#737_MAX_(MAX_7/8/200/9/10) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma
- sortoflog 2mo ago
  > Nothing is ideal Right, which is why touting oversimplified economic models is likely to be contentious ;) Speaking of which: > The more free market a country is, the more prosperous it is. When do you think the US was at its most prosperous? Most would say somewhere in the mid 20th century, which was hardly the least regulated time in its history…
  - WalterBright 2mo ago

shmeeed 2mo ago

>You can only make money by pleasing your customers. If only it were so. Alas, in the real world enshittification, shrinkflation, skimpflation, dark patterns, planned obsolescence, vendor/platform lock-in, rent-seeking, regulatory capture and the like absolutely rule the day, due to a host of free market failures. I don't claim to have a better alternative. But I find your take a bit strange. Are you as a customer satisfied with how all of this is working out?

WalterBright 2mo ago
When was the last time you were forced to buy something you didn't want?
- shmeeed 2mo ago
  Quite recently, actually. The washing machine broke after 18 years. It was a cheap model at the time, but it held up well until the end. I'm under no illusion that the 50% more expensive replacement will last anywhere as long. You know, the old "they just don't build 'em like that anymore" that even the sellers tell you freely. I'd like to buy quality products. For example, I own a coffee machine for which the manufacturer provides spare parts for decades. But I'm not willing to spend 3x for an appliance when there's no realistic expectation to get 2-3x the use of it since it's not economically repairable. So the rational choice is to buy semi-cheap and throw it on the heap when it inevitably breaks sooner than the last one. I hate that game, but I'm not made of money either. Then the TV died. I did some research online and then spend a very disappointing hour browsing a local electronics shop to get a hands-on feel. It's all "smart" shit the software of which will go out of support within 5 years, with dedicated remote buttons advertising streaming services I don't use, too large screens and/or bad build quality, abysmal sound all around, and, not to forget, stuffed full of surveillance and ads. Out of sheer desperation, I got alarmingly close to spending $1.900 for a premium brand 43" that did tick all the boxes - namely, just being a TV that's as good and inobtrusive as the $700 one from 12 years ago. I finally resorted to buying an 7 year old unit from the same premium brand third hand for 1/7 the price. Which in the event turned out to be a really good deal, I admit, but I don't quite think the used market is what we're talking about here. It did not feel at all like the market for new products catered to my preferences. These may be a bit peculiar, but FWIW, I take that's a sentiment quite a few people on HN share: questions about "good dumb TVs" come up every so often, so I'm not alone in this. And don't get me started on printers...

tremon 2mo ago

Free markets are also designed around participants of equal or comparable power. As long as market power is as skewed as it currently is, there are a lot of things wrong with making money that way.

WalterBright 2mo ago
> Free markets are also designed around participants of equal or comparable power. No, they are not. No matter how big your company is, if customers don't like your product, you are going bust. Small companies regularly replace large ones. See the book "The Innovator's Dilemma".

rmunn 2mo ago

But the example I gave was of politicians seeking power for the sake of making money. Which is entirely different from making it via the free market. I'm very much pro-free-markets, but I don't think that (for example) members of Congress should be exempted from the "no insider trading" rules. There have been multiple cases of politicians (from both major American parties — and I'm sure it happens in other countries too, America is just the one I know about) buying stock in a company that they knew was about to get a lucrative government contract, before that news hit the public. So they benefited financially from their insider position, something that is forbidden to everybody else. That's a market distortion, and benefits nobody but the politicians. That's a good example of the kind of selfish desire for money that I meant, and does not fit the free-market philosophy.

WalterBright 2mo ago
I don't see seeking political power and using it as free market.