Actually, that’s exactly how unfettered “free market” capitalism operates. The end game is big companies end up controlling everything, including the regulations in order to tip the scales in their favor.
The industry is an onion and in order to understand why it is the way it is today you need to peel back all of the layers that have been added by the govt over time and the unintended consequences of those.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/921287295/history-of-employer...
Free markets are the most efficient way for information to be transferred throughout the system.
Stricter campaign finance laws, ending revolving-door politics, etc.
But putting the blame on free markets seems like a mistake.
You can't on the one hand tout the "free market", while on the other complain that we don't have the "right" kind of governmental interference.
Even if you could square that circle, it still sounds disingenuous to argue that we could have the most efficient system if only we were to eliminate _thing that said system actively encourages_. The failure is baked into the game, my friend.
I don’t take such a libertarian view myself, by the way. Just pointing out that I don’t think you can pick apart the argument of the person you replied to in that way.
I'd sign up for a significant increase in my taxes if the US system were replaced by the system that I experienced in Belgium for the first 30 years of my life.
And by successfully, I mean: everybody, irrespective of income or status, can expect to get the care they need.
If it was as easy as paying out way out of the problem we'd have done it already.
Nobody is claiming that the US should copy the system of some specific country verbatim. But it's equally dumb to dismiss the common traits of these other systems, and say "nah, let's do just the opposite."
Well you literally said "I'd sign up for a significant increase in my taxes if the US system were replaced by the system that I experienced in Belgium for the first 30 years of my life" so why don't you tell me how that was supposed to be interpreted?
America shares a very long border with a nation with a functional healthcare system and we generally prefer to compare to them.
What all those systems have in common is that they are a mix of free market and strong regulation. The opposite of "let's do even more free market than what we have now."
I don't know how the US can get there. It's probably impossible, just like school shootings and the "No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" argument.
Markets exist by virtue of laws created by governments - property law being the primary example - expecting actors in a free market who aggregate enough wealth to affect those governments not to just strikes me as unrealistic. It reminds me a bit of gaming. Everyone agrees that in a competitive game the most fun part is early on before a 'meta' can be established. But of course that meta will always end up established and it's basically dumb to be mad at people for metagaming or to otherwise expect them not to.
Would such a market allow NDAs?
What do you think of VC-funded "growth" companies that lose money for years while providing products/services at below cost? Is this a case of the free market working or of it being subverted?