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Comment by dustinmr | Hacker News Reader

Also known as not a free market.

Also known as "business as usual", and "natural state of markets that aren't regulated strongly, correctly and responsively enough".

A free market isn't the equilibrium state. Even if a particular idea - like adding or removing some regulations - looks like it would create a free market in some sector, that's only a static picture of conditions just after applying the idea. When you look at that market evolving over time, you'll see it rapidly shedding its "free" status.

I'm not sure you fully grasp what your opponent means and why they mean it when they say "free markets." As an ideal in the market place of ideas, free markets as a concept aren't ever created by ADDING regulation. Free markets generally imply that a system left to itself will eventually regulate itself through market forces and will produce both more output and more freedom as a result. Unfortunately, most people learn that we have free markets in America. What we really have is nothing like a free market. It's some strange mixture of chrony capitalism, elitism, and government regulation. I know this isn't a healthcare post, but it's a perfect example of a misaligned system that sometimes tries to use the word "free market." If the market were actually free, the government wouldn't pick winners that abandon a motive based on patient and public health outcomes in favor of profit. Now that we aren't forced to buy a garbage product anymore, family doctors have been leaving HIPPA behind lately and doing a subscription model with patients and making HEALTH OUTCOMES the priority and not profit. That is a free market competitor... Not the government itself or it's regulations. Free market ideals give money to common people and let them choose. Otherwise, they are just "free" slaves and not participants in the market.

Without any regulation markets tend to be captured by large players. Once these players have enough money they become quasi governments.

Government regulation does not have to lead to regulatory capture. Though it does require vigilance.

It absolutely doesn't need to lead to negative outcome... if the government simply lays out rules for fairness and enforces them. The problem is when they get themselves so bureaucratically involved in something that there is no freedom left to do anything "free". Healthcare and ISPs are great example of this. One should have the goal of patient outcomes. The other should have the goal of high speed, highly available access. Both of those are things the government should entice through it's regulatory framework. However, the least of us always choose to become politicians... So that doesn't happen.

> One should have the goal of patient outcomes. The other should have the goal of high speed, highly available access. Both of those are things the government should entice through it's regulatory framework.

You're not describing a free market. In a free market the goal is always just to make the most amount of money possible. Once you've achieved that goal, you can just drop prices, absorb losses via debt, and freeze out competition. That's why free markets don't work and need heavy regulation.

Yes, when people lack morals, you are correct. In a world where your every word, thought, and idea isn't pre-chewed and then fed into your brain through some form of lighted rectangle, that is completely false. There's a very good reason that some people are DEEPLY inspired by the novel Atlas Shrugged. It took Ayn Rand an enormous number of pages to make her point. More than an internet comment ever will. Most people will read that and watch a lighted rectangle fill their head with what "new" ideas might be in this book. Almost nobody will read it. Even fewer will speak up. Markets can't be free if people are in mental slavery. Like Morpheus said... Most people will fight to protect the system that enslaves them.

That's the No True Scotsman Fallacy. The only absolutely "free" market is a state of nature, without laws and where might is right. Once you impose laws, it's not completely free.

The US telecom market could be more "free" than it is, but there are lots of options, none of which are perfectly "free".

It's not a free market or anywhere near and implying such is dishonest. Coops would be everywhere if it wouldn't be for rediculous city, county, state and federal regulations. Not to mention the miles and miles of dark fiber all over the country held up in ownership litigation, not to mention the federal government created this problem in the first place by heavily subsidizing bell and continuing to do so.

The telco industry has always been a regulated monopolistic market and that is primarily caused and was created by regulation..

> It's not a free market or anywhere near

Right, agreed.

> implying such is dishonest.

/me raises eyebrow.

Making utilities into something that consensus opinion would label a "free market" is incredibly difficult. Without regulation, you get monopolies. With regulation, you get monopolies.

Implying that a "free market" can solve the utility problem is (I won't say "dishonest" because I don't believe you're arguing in bad faith) facile.

One nitpick: AFAIK the issues at the city/county level come from service contracts that guarantee exclusivity in return for things like providing service to sparsely populated (unprofitable) areas and discounted rates for the poor/disabled/etc. You can argue that those deals shouldn't have been made, but then the local government would have been allocating public resources (running wires under streets, conduits, etc) in a way that excluded their disadvantaged constituents.

Anywho I am a proponent of Local Loop Unbundling. Limited conduit/pole space and complex webs of property easements make wired telecoms natural monopolies. Have the government own the conduits and fiber cables, and rent them to service providers instead.

Often the term "free market" is used when one means "competitive market" or perhaps an "open market" or a "market without market failure".

Also, for there to be a free market, there needs to be some sort of market which probably requires a sense of property rights. Whether property rights are in the "natural" state of things is an argument for the philosophers I suppose.

No, laws are what allow a market to remain free. Otherwise, you have monopolistic behavior, cartels, price fixing, etc.

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