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Comment by jfroma | Hacker News Reader

it is interesting that you referred to “black market”. If you come from a working democracy where what is “just” is close to what is “fair”, then “black market” can make you think of drugs, weapons, or these sort of ilegal things. But I want to let you know that in some countries we have to go to the black market to buy another FIAT with less inflation because it is illegal to exchange our currency even to protect our savings.

So, yeah we can call it black market but I like the term “free market”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_currency_controls_...

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They call it black market because a black market is not the same thing as a free market, otherwise they would just call it free market.

Say the central bank of XYZ set a fixed rate of 100 $xyz per USD but it becomes illegal to buy USD and no any bank is willing to sell you USD. In a country like the United States you might hedge against inflation by buying some treasuries.. but in other places they just make it illegal to do anything else.

This automatically creates a “black market” of USD where the price is whatever the people are willing to pay, in the end the free market finds its way.

Again, a black market is not a free market. A free market exists within a legal framework in which rules are enforced. In contrast, a black market is a clandestine market, where illegal transactions take place. This means, for example, that participants in the black market don't have legal recourse in the event of fraud.

“ In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market without market coercions. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority other than those interventions which are made to prohibit market coercions.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

And...?

The definition doesn’t say anything about legal, illegal or regulated. So, you have a different definition to most economists.

It is a market where prices are self regulated by supply and demand, without coercion. It perfectly suits for the exchange of of FIATs (or crypto) between parties.

You can call it whatever you want, anyways.

I recommend “Free to Choose” from Friedman as starting point.

You're mistaken. Most economists understand the difference between a free market and a black market in the same way that I do (I am an economist myself). The very definition of free market that you quoted implies the existence of a legal framework and of an authority with coercive power, since some behaviours are prohibited:

"In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority other than those interventions which are made to prohibit market coercions. Examples of such prohibited market coercions include: economic privilege, monopolies, and artificial scarcities."

Further, a market in which fraudsters can commit fraud with impunity is also not a free market but a dysfunctional market.

At any rate, the notion of free market is only vaguely defined, as it's not an important theoretical construct in economics.

As far as crypto-currency markets are concerned, these are not a single market, but many different markets, some of which are heavily regulated, so it's hard to argue that it's a free market.

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