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Comment by gwright | Hacker News Reader

How do you define ‘power’. The unique aspect of government controls is that we grant the government a monopoly on force (imprisonment, seizure of property, etc). That is not the case with private actors and that is a significant and consequential difference in ‘power’.

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The other unique aspect of government is that you can remove power by voting them out in the next election. In contrast, a private monopoly can continue to use it's influence, money, and power, without recourse forever.

Once you remove physical violence as a mean of interaction, you gain something else which would be violence by any other name. Government minimization is favored the most by those who would gain from the lack of counterbalance.

In the case of market economy, if you can't use violence, then the world would be split into natural monopolies and monopolies after market consolidation. Everyone else will be feudalized because someone else will control their access to water, electricity, education or whatever. Because property is sacred and we can't use violence no matter the consequences.

The ever expanding free to enter and free to participate market is a delusion, so let's not delude ourselves that it will take care of everything without us taking responsibility.

Ok, now explain how free market economies have improved the quality of life and lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history.

Energy. Last few hundred years humanity unlocked new sources of energy. Free markets are a good distribution mechanism, but by themselves they fail at the point when there is no new input in the system. As I said above, there are some other prerequisites like free entry, free participation, plus enough information. Otherwise, the market collapses. free markets are not self-sustaining and if you want for the system to work, you should maintain it.

What do you think a monopoly is? It is almost absolute power especially in industries where barrier to entry is super high.

Monopolies can only exist with government support via protection from competition. Expansive government power makes monopolies more likely and more stable than minimal government power.

This is a really naive way to look at things. For some reason you seem to believe that people that run corporations have better intentions that people who are in the government/politics.

Nope, I'm actually pretty cynical about intentions. But the government can detain me, arrest me, tax me, fine me, etc. A corporation can't do any of that.

I'm not sure what you really mean by "monopoly" or what sort of monopoly you think can persist in the absence of government support.

Note, I started my participation in this thread by advocating for minimizing government, which is not the same as eliminating government. So I'm not trying to assert an absolutist position that free markets should have no regulation.

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