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Comment by davstr1 | Hacker News Reader

Free market is not an absolute measure, not a 100%, but rather a cursor. A country is rather ruled by free market or by government.

Like in "are USA more a free market than Venezuela and North Korea ?"

I can't understand why so many people keep on saying "there is no free market", as that's not even an argument. I mean i hope you can get out of this "black or white" void which just cancels any intent of reasoning. Unless it's done on purpose.

Here is a list by the way : https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

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When somebody makes an argument to let the free market do something free, it's quite important to remember that said free market is not free and will definitely not act freely, whether we're talking North Korea or USA. And the Parisian parking places market is definitely not a free market (as we just saw) so we simply cannot have a real talk about "letting the market decide", until same Parisians vote to let them run free. Assuming that was your argument we could talk about such a vote - which by looking at the trends has zero chances to pass. But let's assume for the sake of argument it would pass. Next vote will be then to limit it again because nobody wants a Cayenne parked in the narrow street in front of their little shop windows, either blocking the view or the passage, or the traffic. But again for the sake of the argument let's say we only liberalize the spaces in places where you can actually park bigger cars. Then yes you will be able to park them, but still not put a kebab stand because well a parking space is a parking space by definition, so again you'd need a voting to change that place attribution. And I could go on to show you how all this is in reality very much not free regardless whether you call the French economy a free market or not. It's not a jungle but a city with lots of inter-dependencies and who doesn't like it can, yeah, move someplace else - like in a jungle. And even in a jungle you wouldn't want to park your Cayenne next to the gorillas den. Freedom to do whatever is there only when you're completely alone - or in imagination.

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