this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This is 100% capitalism. It's not free market to have a goverment-enforced monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This is textbook late stage free market ideals at work. This is how the free market always ends.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (7 children)

X - ~~The system is broken.~~

✅ - The system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

When did it start?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Sorry have you been around to observe a lot of free markets ending?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Gestures wildly at current state of things

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yes but the statement was “this is how free markets always end”. And I’m just wondering if the commenter has actually been around to see “free markets ending.”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think they were less talking about them ending as much as them tending towards the monopoly state over time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Got it. Saying “this is how free markets always end” if they meant “free markets tends to move towards monopolies” confused me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

That's a fair comment I guess...but it's the reality of the game. The US was a free market through it's early history and today is the result of that.

It's just how the free market ends, always. It starts with a few winners consolidating, abusing their monopoly and buying their government protections, and poof...welcome to late stage capitalism.

"Free Market" people always disregard human nature at it's worst. There will always be people and orgs that game the system. You simply can't prevent that. The US is absolutely an end game free market.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

There are lots of different kinds of markets, like phone market, grocery market, goldsmith market, etc.

The governments have to interfere in many markets all the time, that there aren’t monopolies forming or Price-fixing agreement be done, which would lead to prices go ridiculously high, or last companies in markets fucking up taking tons of knowhow with them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You are correct. There would be no copyrights or patents in a free market.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the huge companies would dominate over small companies even more than they already do.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Copyrights and patents are literally government enforced monopolies for huge companies. Without them, there would be a lot more competition.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Really? Calling it a government enforced monopoly seems very disingenuous.

Good luck trying to make a movie without Disney stealing it or making an invention with really effective solar panels or something without the biggest companies stealing it and bankrupt the original creator.

Copyright and patents protect everyone involved in creation and while there are a LOT of problems with the systems. Removing it entirely seems like the biggest overcorrection possible.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Or trade secrets. "Perfect information" is a bitch. Not to speak of "perfectly rational actors": Say goodbye to advertisement, too, we'd have to outlaw basically all of it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Trade secrets don't need to be enforced much by law. You can create an ad hoc trade secret regime by simply keeping your secret between a few key employees. As it happens, there are some laws that go beyond that to help companies keep the secret, but that only extends something that could happen naturally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

To get closer to the free market there would have to be a duty to disclose any- and everything that's now a trade secret, no matter how easily kept. To not just get closer but actually get there we all would need to be telepathic. As said, perfect information is a bitch of a concept.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Being free to innovate and keep your own ideas to yourself sounds like it should be part of the free market though.

Forcing people to disclose their (mental) secrets seems bizarre.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Are you telling me that the axioms behind the simplistic model are wrong?? shocked-pikachu.jpg

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not so much that they're wrong is that they're impossible in practice. Axioms, by their very nature, cannot be justified from within the system that they serve so "true" or "false" aren't really applicable.

The model does have its justification, "given these axioms, we indeed get perfect allocation of resources", that's not wrong it's a mathematical truth, and there's a strain of liberalism (ordoliberalism) which specifically says "the state should regulate so that the actually existing market more closely approximates this mythical free market unicorn", which is broadly speaking an immensely sensible take and you'll have market socialists nodding in agreement, yep, that's a good idea.

And then there's another strain (neoliberalism) which basically says "lul we'll tell people that 'free market' means 'unregulated market' so we can be feudal lords and siphon off infinite amounts of resources from the plebs".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Wrong as in not sound. An argument can be valid assuming its assumptions are true. The argument is the model, which really is a set of arguments. Its assumptions which are taken axiomatically are as you say impossible, therefore they are not true (which I called wrong). So the argument is not sound. I'm not saying anything different than what you said really, just used informal language. ☺️

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

To be fair, we absolutely should outlaw at least 99% of all currently practiced forms of advertising and make it so that new forms of advertising have to be whitelisted by a panel of psychiatrists, sociologists, environmentalists and urban planners before they're allowed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

What's government enforced about it? Is ARM the only allowed chip designer for cellphones?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

license enforcement is a thing because if someone bypasses it you can sue them, which is a government interaction. Technically, claiming X means nothing if there's no one that enforces your claim.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yes but that rule protects you the same as it does them. They can be a monopoly if nobody else can get their chips sold but they cannot be a government enforced monopoly unless nobody else is allowed to sell chips.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (26 children)

That's not a government enforced monopoly. A government enforced monopoly means nobody else is allowed in the market. Like utility companies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Lots of Utilities are consumer cooperatives which is funnily enough Socialist, but the people working there wouldn't like to hear that.

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