> There are other forms of competition that work better.
There certainly are. The one that works best is the free market.
There certainly are. The one that works best is the free market.
Would you say food is in that category? The free market is the only system that has ever provided a consistent food surplus. The US, with its free market, became the first country with food security and you can see it in the statistics - the average height of Americans increased throughout the 19th century, peaking out around WW2.
> why we don't put municipal water on the free market
Instead we have water intensive almonds being grown in an arid area undergoing a record drought, alongside the government blocking desalination plants (California)
> why Texas can't keep the lights on
Texas is undergoing a record heat wave. Rolling blackouts are predicted this summer for California.
> no sane country would try to distribute healthcare on a free market
Health care in the US was cheap before the government got involved in it.
Only for those who were healthy and had employer provided insurance. Everyone else either went without or paid through the nose or was dropped as soon as they actually needed services. Healthcare premiums are more expensive now because the insurance is a much better product for many people.
Modern food surplus is mainly thanks to the Green Revolution, thanks to advancements in fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery. A lot of that was government-lead.
On top of the heavily-controlled agriculture there is mostly a free market for consumer products (just needs to be regulated not to save costs by causing cancers), but that has innovated into making junk food cheaper than a healthy diet.
These are not failures of the free market. The growth of junk food can be attributed in large part to corn subsidies.
Now, if you attribute the success of agriculture to the government, why have all the collective farming systems failed completely? Why did the USSR have to import wheat from Kansas?
Modern wheat came from Norman Borlaug's research, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation - not a government project. He received a well-earned Nobel Peace Prize for it.
The Haber-Bosch process was developed at BASF, a private company, and was the first industrialized production of fertilizer.
> heavily-controlled agriculture
That's simply not true. A subsidy is not "control". The government does not direct what gets produced, who produces it, how it is produced, nor does it take the profits.
On the other hand, the closer one gets to socialism, the worse it works :-(
Socialism is politics.
That’s clearly a direct contradiction. So basically nobody is actually promoting free markets, they all have their own spin to get past these contradictions.
I don't know where the idea that free markets require perfect information comes from.
As for monopolies, the historical ones are ones set up and enforced by the government.
SO never had a market share that exceeded 90%. Throughout the years-long anti-trust trial, SO's market share declined, as competitors had learned how to compete with SO.
During the height of SO, the consumer price of kerosene dropped 70%. There is no evidence SO harmed consumers or charged monopoly prices.
As for Microsoft, they never had more than 90% share, there were always alternatives consumers could buy (Linux and Apple), and their market share has slipped quite a bit since the Justice Dept took no action against them. There's no evidence Microsoft charged monopoly prices - they charged with giving away free copies of their browser! They still give it away for free.
Nobody ever demonstrated any harm to consumers from Microsoft.
Standard oil was the massively dominant player which controlled enough of the oil supply to be able to set the market price because the competition had insufficient capacity to make up the difference and there was a lack of an equivalent substitute good(s). That’s the economic definition of a monopoly.
As to being convinced, it isn’t illegal to become a monopoly.
> set the market price
Again, the "market price" declined by 70% under SO's alleged monopoly.
“Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal.”
Don’t constrain trade and it’s perfectly legal to become a monopoly. Not being a monopoly is a defense but so is not constraining commerce.
You run into situations where people can’t trust a gas station is actually selling gas when anyone can slap an Exxon sign up. Reputation networks fill some of these roles, but gatekeepers aren’t free markets.
No evidence? It's all around you. The US for mostly free market. It's done spectacularly well. For communism, how about the USSR, N. Korea, etc. They're not hard to find. Do you think they did well? I read somewhere that N. Koreans were 4 inches shorter than their southern neighbors. Does that sound like hard over socialism is a success?
Why is it that every country and society that tried collective farms starved, and sometimes resorted to cannibalism?
The Pilgrims tried collective farming for their first year. They starved. Jamestown tried collective farms. They starved. The Israeli Kibbutzen are propped up by the government, as they cannot produce enough food. Kansas was called the "Breadbasket of the Soviet Union." And on and on.
I saw on the news the other day an interview with a fellow trying to get in the US via the southern border. He has nothing. He spent 4 months getting from Cuba to that border. What would motivate someone to do that? Triumphant socialism in Cuba?
Europe is arguably a less free market than the US but it's by no means clear which one is working better. Somalia ruled by the warlords was a freer market but nobody was emigrating from the US to Somalia.
That kinda sank your argument, as Somalia is anarchy, not a free market.
> it's by no means clear which one is working better
The US economy does much better than the European one. Look at investment returns, for example. Look at which country all the FAANG companies are in.
> That kinda sank your argument, as Somalia is anarchy, not a free market.
A free market is an economical system, anarchy is a political one. They are orthogonal to each other. In fact there are anarcho capitalists (the most extreme liberterians) and anarchistic socialists.
> > it's by no means clear which one is working better
> The US economy does much better than the European one. Look at investment returns, for example.
Investment returns? There are many developing nations that have higher than both. They are significantly based on risk of the investment.
> Look at which country all the FAANG companies are in.
So? They are also in the most regulated (least free market) state in the US, that really doesn't prove anything.
The evidence is everywhere, and very strong.
And, shall we compare infant mortality figures? How about life expectancy? Europe does better than the US on all but mean income, which is skewed by billionaires. Having more billionaires does not favor your argument.
Life expectancy: America has a big problem with obesity, which is a side effect of prosperity. Obesity negatively influences life expectancy.
Income: income needs to be expressed in terms of Purchasing Power Parity. Besides, what evidence do you have that this is skewed by billionaires?
I'll stick with average height. It's a pretty good indicator of a prosperous country, up until the genetic potential is reached.
As for the Dutch, having traveled in Holland, they appear to have a culture of more healthy food. It's their choice, and this choice is available to Americans, too. Nobody makes Americans drink soda pop all day.
And, American obesity, and (more to the point) prevalence of metabolic disorder causing it, is not a product of prosperity. It is, ultimately, a product of dysfunctional government, with a consequence of falling prosperity.