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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

As long as we don't confuse what we have right now (corrupt cronyism, corporatism, blatant vertical monopolies, blatant government-backed monopsonies, etc.) with an actual free market.

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Yep, it's best not to confuse reality with pipe dreams, generally.

I'm not sure what way that sarcasm is cutting. I'll say the "design the problem away" impulse is partly what causes corporatism and monopolies. For example, regulatory capture in which the regulated industries more or less control the regulators.

So I'll say the regulate-the-problem-away impulse is a pipe dream in the long run.

So I'll say the regulate-the-problem-away impulse is a pipe dream in the long run.

I'll call it "the lesser of nightmares".

Being as we've seen where "just let property owners do whatever they want" has lead us to in the past.

Where's that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

And so now we have strict liability law.

Considering that, I don't believe this case, really justifies your (apparent) paranoia against the free market.

It isn't paranoia when the entire history of the "free market" demonstrates that... (not all, but a far to high proportion of) these entities pretty much will screw over everyone and everything they can, in exchange an extra buck or too -- unless very rigorously constrained from doing otherwise.

Or that is to say, "regulated".

THAT'S why there are so few issues in the heavily government controlled sectors of the economy, like health care, public education and drug policy. /s

There's plenty of issues, of course.

Which again, is why I referred to it as the "lesser of nightmares".

However "look the other way" isn't a very viable strategy either, it can also easily end up with corporate abuse. So what to do?

Aren't those the natural consequences and evolutions of a truly free market?

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