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Funny. Mention "free markets" in a positive light and get downvoted as a troll.

• eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  It's not that you said it in a positive light. It's that you used it as a common noun. The term "free market" is only useful as a comparative, like so: "America has freer markets than India". This lets people know and contextualize what you're saying. Otherwise, using the term just turns into a competition of politics between Republican shills (ie: you), minarcho-capitalist ("libertarian") ideologues, mutualist anarchists, and socialists on what it means to be a "free market", how "free" a market has to be to qualify for the term, and whether the relative "freedom" or lack thereof of a market matters at all. I fall into that last camp. There are actually reputable studies showing that given 100% Free markets never occur in reality (perfect competition, perfect information, zero transaction costs were the definition they used), most not-completely-retarded allocation mechanisms other than those are more-or-less as decent as each other; there was basically a 3% allocative-efficiency advantage to the realistically imperfect market over the tested form of central planning. A mathematician also showed that even perfect theoretical markets can oscillate neverendingly between multiple general equilibriums rather than ever converging to one efficient equilibrium. In conclusion, stop using the term "free market" outside of meaningful context.