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Comment by bkirkby | Hacker News Reader

the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government (including those politicians you reference). so when we bring in more government then it's less free market. how close we are getting to a free market depends on who is in power and calling for reduced government intervention/regulations for businesses.

as far as control of media, traditional media is becoming increasingly irrelevant and when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free.

and small players seem to disrupt all the time. openai being the most obvious recent example. twitch being another notable example before that.

i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions, but your use of bicameral confused me a little. did you mean to say binary?

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> the "control" of a "weighted control economy" is usually enforced through government

It is extremely common for large private firms to have weighted control in an economy. Sometimes their control is bolstered by government and sometimes it is hindered by it. But in a completely unregulated market it would be common for monopolies to pop up which could then control large sections of the economy. There simply is no simple linear relationship between "free markets" and government intervention.

> when free speech is allowed on social media the economy becomes more free

Sadly the loudest "free speech proponents" who run social media firms are actually just interested in allowing the speech they want. They will still do everything they can to limit the speech of those they disagree with.

i see control and influence as being two separate things. mainly, control is forced by the controller while influence is granted from the influenced.

> when we bring in more government then it's less free market.

Let's go to the extreme with your logic. If you completely remove the government you end up with the mafia textbook. The easier way to win at the game is taking out the competition with lethal force. Once that's done there's no one to compete with you, no "free market", congratulations you won.

Why compete in bringing value when you can just use your money to takeout the competition.

Rules make the market. A "free market" without rules is neither free nor a market.

Bicameral was used by Jaynes in the sense of distinct seperate chambers of the mind, rather than political chambers; I can't say I agreed with his thesis but I always enjoyed his argument and the apropriation of the word.

> i usually don't respond to distracting personal questions

These were specific questions to tease out why you're presenting free market OR planned economies as the only choices- it smacked of certain type of central north american libertarianism that uses Heinlein's early teen reader simplifications.

OpenAi being described as a small player is laughable, small players don't appear with one billion US pledged in backing and sheperded by core established technocrats.

BTW, the question was: "Is the US as it operates today a free market?"

Do you have a clear answer there?

i don't think anyone has a clear answer for "winning the argument" since definitions can be endlessly debated.

i think a more useful question is "what about the existing US economy is what makes it work/effective?" another useful question is "what about other economies make them less effective than the US economy?"

to answer the first question, the US economy works better when it's a freer market. magatte wade gives a convincing answer to the second question about africa when she points out it's generally very difficult to start a business in african countries.

i'm curious about what alternative you are interested in promoting and how. are you against free markets or do you have ideas on how to make markets more free?

> i think a more useful question is...

I don't: that is a different question which isn't as useful as the one actually asked. Like the person you responded to without answering, I, too, am interested in hearing your direct and clear answer to the question, "Is the US as it operates today a free market?"

Would you mind answering that question, please?

If you can define what a free market is (to you), you have a higher likelihood of your question being answered, rather than continuing to ask it without any clarification. This is similar to what the parent was saying.

there are parts of the American market that are free and there are parts that are not. We'd have to get into specific details to classify said parts.

While I don't think the existing economy is so binary (bicameral?), you are free to assume either a free market or not and make your arguments accordingly to explore the principles of free markets versus planned economies. I don't think a critique of the general principles of free market versus not relief on my specific answer. We are talking about ideals espoused in a self-proclaimed manifesto, so it's appropriate to speak about the ideals.

> While I don't think the existing economy is so binary

As a call back to how this started you yourself partitioned global(?) economies into

> you have free markets (which the manifesto supports) or planned economies

so you did in fact think that economies are this OR that.

For those of us in the real world many G20 and othe economies are hybrid with a mix of both features and "free market" is a loose term of idealogy that can mean one thing to readers of Adam Smith in his contemporous context and other things to various flavours of modern US libertarians.

> there are parts of the American market that are free and there are parts that are not.

That has been my observation, too: it is not a free market, but rather a composite.

Why do you think Americans chose to implement the "non-free" parts? What do you imagine they want out of government intervention, and why? Why do you think that Americans believe intervention is better than no intervention?

Those are the questions I think are worth discussing along the lines of the initial question, if the goal is to change what people want. You first must understand, empathize with, and internalize their motivation for what they currently want.

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