Hacker News Reader

Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

As a pro-market fan, Khan is great.

Pro-market: pro-market advocates for policies that enhance competition and market efficiency. Understands that god markets are made. Pro-market advocates believe in creating conditions where businesses can compete fairly without undue advantages from government favoritism. Government regulation can be essential to correct market failures and promote a level playing field.

Free market: and ideological stance where markets are without government intervention. Belief in ideal world where market failures don't exist and if they exists that's a good thing.

View on HN

>Free market: and ideological stance where markets are without government intervention

no, markets without government intervention are called "laissez-faire" markets. There would be no need for that term if that's what free market meant.

> There would be no need for that term if that's what free market meant.

I'm not following here: are you suggesting that given any two different words, it is impossible for them to refer to the same thing or mean the same thing?

no, I'm saying free market does not mean laissez-faire

Free market is an evolution of the concept laissez-faire market after early economists realised that leaving market participants to do their own thing didn't ensure a competitive market.

There'd always been a belief in early capitalists that an unregulated market would be inherently self-regulating from competition, in a way that allowed for competition, and yeah, well, I would emphasise the word "belief" in that.

I once met a theologian who had done their PhD on the language used by a politically powerful neoliberal group in their writings on the market and came to the conclusion that it was primarily the language of faith, not the language of science.

You're right in that "free market" is a refinement of the laissez faire market, because a laissez faire market was always assumed by its early proponents to be naturally competitive, and the reality turned out not to be so.

Shit, even Hayek opposed laissez-faire markets in some areas.

There was a time, long ago, when libertarians opposed initiation of violence and fraud.

That was probably before the internet was invented. These days, a typical online libertarian opposes all government action as violence, but when you mention fraud, it's like: "but who decides what is or isn't fraud? if the customer signed a contract, it was their revealed preference to get scammed..."

I mean, I agree that Khan is the best possible option, but I disagree that pro-market isn't ideological.

Where the free market fans see child slavery and sexual slavery and rejoice (free to make any contract you want to after all), the pro market people believe that if you just put enough guard rails on it, greed will magically turn into a force for good.

Obviously I also have an ideology, but at least I'm honest enough to not pretend that capitalism (or communism/anarchy) are naturally occuring, instead of simply a choice we make.

Why do you describe “free market” as being ideological, and “pro-market” without those terms? Both seem equally ideological (or not).

Because they are against one and for the other. Pro markets means whatever policies they agree with, which is of course how all broken highly regulated markets begin their run.

Idealist: "the free market is perfect!"

Realist: "the free market has flaws, which can be addressed by..."

Replace "free market" with anything you like

The realist might be an idealist that is seeing inexistent flaws tho

Then that's not a realist, by definition.

> accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly.

> representing a person or thing in a way that is accurate and true to life.

That's the point, a wrong realist.

They most likely aren't idealist, as that isn't a requirement. Anyone who's smarter than a potato can notice some of the more glaring failures (even if they don't understand the mechanism behind it).

Very true.

The definition of realist has flaws...

Everything is ideology to some extent, but not everything is ideological to the same degree. The beliefs that a level playing field is good and that winning by means of political favoritism is bad are almost universally agreed on. Almost all political philosophies, including various shades of socialism and communism, agree that markets are needed to some degree if only for price discovery.

Republicans have made the term ideological a negative one. Sure, the dictionary definition is to relate to ideology; but in practice (especially when talking politics) it implies one is picking a worse option because it aligns with their ideology. So their claim above is one is picking free markets due to ideology, whereas another would pick pro markets because it's actually the best solution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com