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Comment by orib | Hacker News Reader

Not in the ideal case. The best long term strategy in a free, highly competitive market with knowledgable consumers and no externalities is to build long term trust. The way to build long term trust is to be moral and ethical.

Now, this breaks down if:

    - There are externalities
    - The consumers are uneducated and uncritical
    - There is a monopoly

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#1 and #2 are basically the default. Not good news for moral character.

No. Just his argument breaks down. Not all kinds of #1 and #2 dispose creating trust (and educating your customers) as a viable strategy.

"educating your customers" may be possible within certain domains. But is it possible in a free market structure which must include all people?

Does the definition of "transparency" also imply that all mechanisms which emerge in a free market must be "understandable" by all participants? That is, even if you fully disclose financials, but the transactions and risks are so complex the average "customer" can't or does not have time to make sense of it, is it "transparent".

Very true. You probably need some legislation to get around that. For example, taxing emissions is a step towards it, but only if that money actually is spent covering the cleanup costs of the environmental damage done by the company. Other externalities should also be charged for, of course.

Besides unhiding the hidden costs, I'm not sure that more government intervention would be a good thing, but I know for a fact that I'm not qualified enough to suggest solutions.

"The best long term strategy"

Ignoring the fact that you made a baldfaced assertion with no factual backup or even logical argument. Why worry about long term if in short term it's possible to make a killing and retire rich by corroding morals?

And regarding ideal as in "ideal free market" ideal is euphemism for fantasy.

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