Comment by llmslave2
1 day ago
It's a totally reasonable position that both regulation and companies exploiting users are wrong. And it's also entirely a moral assertion that markets should resolve to outcomes judged by members of some political apparatus. Likewise, the idea that a third party should interfere with economic relations between two consenting parties is also a moral judgement, not an absolute fact.
Most arguments in favour of regulation cherry pick what they feel are success stories and ignore everything else. Interfering with highly complex and dynamical self-regulating systems has a cost. There are many examples of regulation leading to negative outcomes, and it's also telling that large corporations push for regulation because it's one of the most effective obstacles for competition in a market.
Markets depend on regulations.
Free market absolutists don’t know what they are talking about.
The actual originators of market capitalism, most famously Adam Smith, but also proponents like Milton Friedman, had no such confusion.
In reality, today’s free market absolutists don’t get their ideas from economists (even free market economists). Instead, they get their ideas from terrible mid 20th century novelists (I’ll let you figure out who I’m talking about), who didn’t know much about how anything worked, never mind economics.
What is the point of responding to someone if you're going to completely ignore everything they say? Serious question, I'm curious what compels you to do this. Especially in such an arrogant and condescending way.
What you said is a bigger fantasy than the complete history of fundamentalist Marxism. There are precisely zero examples of a Laissez-faire economy succeeding in the real world. It is a wholecloth fiction.
If you'd like to reconsider your stance from a realpolitik perspective, it might clarify the parent's response.
6 replies →
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers