Comment by BoxFour
8 hours ago
> Perhaps it is, I don't have enough insight to know.
You can spot it in this post, too.
> Is it actually a free market argument?
The argument is:
Large corporation A offers service B at price $C. $C is an extravagant amount, and is due to the greed and inefficiencies of A. A can only charge $C because of regulatory capture, or using capital to elbow out upstarts, or whatever other argument you want to assume (ie it's not a truly free market).
If A should leave the market (forcibly or not), company D can now flourish by offering B at $E, where $E is much less than $C. Because D doesn't have the inefficiencies and greed of A, everyone profits.
Seems like a pretty standard "free markets/Econ 101" argument to me.
> Honest question: Why?
Frequently it’s nothing more than a flimsy pretext for cowardice, a lack of knowledge, or simple indifference.
I don't disagree with you, many topics are complex. Generally though, people dislike those who refuse to take a stance even if it's a weakly-held one (thus Machiavelli's famous advice).
> Seems like a pretty standard "free markets/Econ 101" argument to me.
Hm I think I see what you mean. It's a free market argument that includes that some regulation is in place which keeps A in business and keeps D out of business.
But wouldn't the free market corollary then be to remove that regulation so the market can be more free? That's hardly the suggestion coming from the left-leaning perspective, which instead proposes to add more regulation. So the end-to-end argument (including s corollary for what to do) doesn't actually sound free market to me.