Comment by BoxFour
18 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.
Indeed, free market means no Government intervention such as price controls and anything else that distorts the market.
And it is not exactly "left" either. Rothbard was a right-libertarian, aka. libertarian capitalist or right-wing libertarian.