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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

> Only deviating from free-market fundamentalism—giving everyone health care, for example—could lead to shortages

This is true, the symptoms the article is looking at are strong signals of non-free-market policies. Under capitalism, the failure mode is going to be very high prices. If the failure mode isn't high prices then the market probably isn't being run as a free market.

Like when there is a crisis and the government steps in to ration or fix prices and a breadline forms - that breadline isn't a capitalist problem! Capitalism was suspended because the government didn't like what would happen under capitalism (which, I think we all agree, would have been high prices to the point where there was still bread on the shelf that people could buy). The capitalist outcome isn't a utopia, and isn't even pleasant, but it also isn't a breadline.

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>which, I think we all agree, would have been high prices to the point where there was still bread on the shelf that people could buy

I don't think I agree. The outcome might have been riots and people grabbing the bread and wrecking the store.

There's a vagueness to "laissez faire" - who are you letting do what?

Ahh ha, this is like when I say a Scotsman was rude to me and someone else informs me that it must not have been a true Scotsman, then

Ahh ha, this is like when I say a Frenchman was rude to me and someone else informs me that it must not have been a true Scotsman, then

It's the exact same as when some pimply-faced first year uni student tells you "nobody's really tried proper communism"

I guess it's also the same as when some CEO of a multi-national corporation says "nobody's really tried proper communism" but I'm failing to see what the pimply faced first year uni student really yields to this argument - since both of those theoretical people definitely exist. Some people do use really bad arguments - people who bring random unrelated characteristics in to color an attack are definitely in that crowd.

It's more similar to someone saying "That behaviour isn't rude in Scotland".

The store isn't running out of bread, bread-eaters are running out of money.

If someone lives in Brazil, was born in Brazil and speaks Spanish though there is a reasonable chance that they are in fact not a Scotsman.

If there are consistent breadlines, that means someone is giving away a resource at below its value - free markets sort that out very quickly. They turn up for a few days then go away as prices adjust. Persistent problems only crop up when something regulatory is keeping prices down because the seller has huge incentives to raise them until people go away.

I'm not arguing the situation would be rosy, but breadlines just are not how free markets deal with the situation. Markets use price signals to allocate, not long queues. Not a controversial fact, although people do sometimes get very unhappy about it.

You miss the point. No one is saying capitalism will literally cause breadlines. They are saying capitalism has made breadlines needed in some circumstances. These are different things but related.

Brazilians speak Portuguese.

But the prices ARE increasing, and those most affected are most increasing!

In a capitalist economy you may sometimes have a breadline, however in a centrally planned economy you sometimes have bread

I suggest that we stop looking at "the government" as some entity that is separate from capitalism and/or markets. Unregulated capitalism/free markets are unstable systems that eventually produce regulators one way or another; a democratic government is just one form that this takes, but it could just as easily result in a cyberpunk megacorp or a military junta making all the rules. Markets always trend towards the consolidation of power, as a result of economies of scale; any "free" market will result in a winner who eventually uses their power to set the rules to make sure they stay on top.

True capitalism has never been tried, we must just try again comrades.

Exactly

When capitalism fails and something else steps in to fix it, the fact that the fix is happening at the same time as something bad means it must be responsible.

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