Hacker News Reader

Comment by bkirkby | Hacker News Reader

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?

View on HN

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com