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Comment by wtfrmyinitials | Hacker News Reader

> So it’s possible that big companies are increasing their market power by using lobbying to capture politicians and regulators. If this is true, it’s very bad news for free markets and capitalism.

A market where companies engage in regulatory capture is not a free market. The word you're looking for is "corporatism", Noah Smith.

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Isn't that kind of a no-true-Scotsman point? Starting from a totally free market, regulatory capture is inevitable (or other anti-competitive practice destructive to free markets). Achieving a persistently "free" market requires at least enough regulation to prevent that transition.

> Starting from a totally free market, regulatory capture is inevitable.

How?

Companies obtain money and power. Companies use money and power to secure their position, because "make the best product" is usually not the best investment whenever "prevent competitors from reaching the market" is on the table, and regulation is one of the popular ways to achieve the latter.

> whenever "prevent competitors from reaching the market" is on the table

So when you don’t have a free market?

I think you are confusing the possibility being present with the possibility being realized. In a free market, that possibility is present but unrealized. The possibility doesn't make the market non-free (and anything that would prevent such possibility would make the market strictly speaking non-free), but when entities choose to act on that possibility the market is no longer free.

You didn't say it was possible (which almost anything is in this context). You said it was inevitable.

Perhaps the free market is responsible for allowing the free market to morph into corporatism?

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