Comment by ETH_start | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ETH_start | Hacker News Reader

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I never implied any term with the word "market" is good. And of course most people are going to only have a simplistic understanding of most concepts. But the reason the free market was popularized in the first place is that people who study economics found that it produced prosperity, and then actively popularized the idea of a free market.

Of course, they were massively out-propagandized by special interests who benefit from government restrictions on voluntary interactions, and so the free market is extremely unpopular, with all trends — e.g. the rising degree of regulatory of centralization as measured by per capita regulatory compliance costs, the rapid rise in social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP since 1950, etc — demonstrating that.

>>since 100 years is 1923, so any proof at that point was just leading into Depression.

The Federal Reserve, i.e. the central bank, created the Crash of 1929, and it was Hoover and FDR's government "cures" that turned what would have been a short downturn and quick recovery into a Depression.

Hoover's role:

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/842709

FDR's:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ff.org/fdrs-policies-prolon...

At one point, the FDR administration was paying farmers a sum equal to $500 million today, to kill and bury five million baby pigs:

https://footnote.wordpress.ncsu.edu/2020/08/14/plowing-under...

This while people were going hungry.

The FDR administration, economically illiterate ideologues as they were, believed that the problem was low prices, and that by reducing the supply of agricultural products, they could push up the price, and end the depression.

In reality, the money supply had contracted due to cascading loan defaults, and what needed to happen is for prices to adjust downward to come in line with wages.

The FDR administration instituted a number of measures to try to control prices, to horrible effect on millions.

I didn't know about the pigs. That was interesting.

I've never understood paying farmers to not produce. But, it still happens today. Through decades of Republican and Democratic administrations, we still pay farmers to not produce. And we pay oil companies welfare, not sure why we pay them anything. The government is always trying to balance the economy and subsidize some industries more than others (again, the gray area on which is the right thing to subsidize).

Not sure we are dissagreeing. You don't seem to be against regulations on a market in general, just not these regulations. Markets are artificial to begin with, there is no such thing as a 'free market' without some organizing effort that people call 'regulations'. How free does it have to be, in 1900's there were private armies, do we go back to that much freedom.

I tend to think the Gov should step in on in-elastic markets. Sure, 'free markets' are great when there is competition for something like a TV. But not great when there is a monopoly on insulin.

That is why health care free markets don't work. When you are having a heart attach you aren't shopping around for a bargain price.

Anyway, I think we diverged a lot from original post. I don't necessarily disagree with 'classical' economics. But those are a long way from modern right wing propaganda on 'free markets' which I thought the thread had gone to. So when someone suddenly starts talking about real 'markets', have to re-calibrate.

I'm against all regulations that impact mutually voluntary economic interactions between consenting adults (so every regulation with the exception of those relating to interactions with minors and the environment), so I believe we are disagreeing. I fully support targeted government intervention that does not violate the freedom to contract, i.e. is not a regulation, to produce public goods. Where we agree is that we both believe that some level of government intervention is required for optimal economic function. I just restrict the type of government intervention that I support to types that don't suppress the free market.

Yes, markets are artificial, in the same way that a peaceful society where murder is prohibited is artificial. Doesn't mean they are not beneficial.

>>That is why health care free markets don't work. When you are having a heart attach you aren't shopping around for a bargain price.

Emergency care is a small subset of healthcare spending, that should be government provided. The rest is far better provided by a free market. The example of the cosmetic procedures industry, and how it vastly outperforms the healthcare industry with the advantage of being more market based than the latter, shows how beneficial market freedom is:

https://www.ncpathinktank.org/commentaries/the-market-for-me...

The industries at the top are the most government run/subsidized, and the ones at the bottom the most consumer/market driven:

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-3...

Healthcare is not exception to the rule that more freedom in the market generates more efficiency and innovation.

In this "regulations that impact mutually voluntary economic interactions between consenting adults".

I think you are missing the part where there are very few interactions between individuals. Since the corporation was granted person hood, and the bulk of all interactions are really between consenting corporations, actual real humans are left out. If me a human individual consents to interact with a corporation that is also a consenting person, it isn't really equal, or free. The corporation can do a number of things, like swamping the human with legal costs, non-stop lawsuits. Or on grander schemes, maybe the corporation can buy up all the food or land in an area, and force a population to capitulate and come to terms with whatever advantageous agreement the corporation desires.

Your view of the individual, while romantically desirable. I can't argue against it, it sounds nice. It doesn't actually work in practice, because the free market is NOT made up of 'consenting adults'. It is made up giant constructs, and humans under duress, forced to make due to survive. And when it gets bad enough, the humans take their 'freedom' and rise up to protest, and society either collapses or maybe some half measure like unions is the outcome.

>I think you are missing the part where there are very few interactions between individuals. Since the corporation was granted person hood, and the bulk of all interactions are really between consenting corporations, actual real humans are left out.

You can't use mental gymnastics to justify regulations. Corporations are just legal arrangements between individuals. There is a chain of voluntary interactions linking the shareholders to any action the corporation takes. To restrict corporate behavior is to restrict the right of people to coordinate their actions through legal arrangements like corporations.

>The corporation can do a number of things, like swamping the human with legal costs, non-stop lawsuits.

If powerful entities, whether people acting collectively as corporations, or just wealthy individuals, are able to do this, then that is a problem with the legal system, and the solution should be targeted at fixing that problem.

These problems should not be used as an excuse to create laws that violate the right to freely contract. In practice, these laws and the principles behind them end up being used by the same corporations that you've turned into your bogeyman, to massively exploit the population.

That is all very semi-mathematically correct, in the utopia of economics text books with all individuals are rational with equal with perfect knowledge and resources.

What actually happens in practice, humans are not rational, they have to eat, and all decisions are compromised. Corporations are a group of individuals, but I've seen plenty of middle managers, that have to hit their numbers, are feeling the pressure, and they will definitely break laws, dump waste, take advantage of underlings. And, the underlings, they have bills, have to eat, they go along with it. It is pressure all the way down through the organization, nobody is free to make 'contracts' between individuals. There are no free decisions.

Guess overall, think you are missing the the power dynamic and how that plays out in groups. LOL - Groups of monkeys.

I agree that these are all problems, but again, I think the solution is to focus on fixing those problems directly, and not let special interests use these problems as the pretense for imposing their long-desired restrictions on the free market.

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