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Comment by marketingtech | Hacker News Reader

I'd argue it's not "just business" when a government intervenes (rightly or wrongly) in a free market outcome.

Regulations and subsequent interventions are part of the business environment.

It's not that different from environmental regulations that stop companies from just dumping toxic waste in rivers. Properly disposing of waste might make a business unsuccessful.

By that definition, "business environment" just describes the universe at large. Meteor strikes are part of the business environment. Nuclear war is part of the business environment. Solar flares are part of the business environment.

I'm not saying it's wrong in some general philosophical sense, but you've taken a useful phrase and turned it into a useless one.

I would insist that the useless phrase is “free market” , as it implies a vacuum where government does not intervene, but what is a business but an agreement with the government to operate under certain rules?

>but what is a business but an agreement with the government to operate under certain rules.

Mafias can run businesses without government regulation or consent, with employees, payroll, logistics, even internal regulations - a black market is still a market.

I think the Mafia is playing the role of the government in that case - deciding what the rules are, extracting fees, exacting revenge etc.

More like a competitor with the state, since neither have a monopoly on violence at that point.

Maybe I should say the government is playing the role of the mafia!

“Free Market” was a term coined to refer to a market free of rent-seeking gatekeepers.

How far language has shifted, that it has instead become a term to refer to a market where nobody removes them.

We mostly don't have a free market in the usual buzzword meaning of that term, and to whatever partial extent we do, it's replete with the kind of asymmetry in information and power that leads to economic outcomes that are both inefficient and inequitable except as corrected for with the beneficial kind of government intervention.

In other words, if you want good outcomes, you sometimes need the government. (Yes, I realize the government can make things worse and not only better; this is also true of the private sector.)

In principle agreed but I'm not sure why Giphy essentially getting the death sentence is a positive outcome.

I said nothing about that being a positive outcome, and the CMA is not proposing to require that. They want Facebook to sell Giphy to a suitable buyer, not to spin it back out as independent.

A free market is not a market free of regulation. Adam Smith was pretty explicit that markets can't exist without regulation as without uniform rules of engagement and the trust that creates in the system, there is no free market.

> not “just business” when a government intervenes in a free market outcome

Like telling Apple it’s not allowed to vertically integrate its mobile appliance or guarantee a curated walled garden as part of its market offering.

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