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Comment by marenkay | Hacker News Reader

This makes a good argument against centralized production and knowledge. It would economically be much more reasonable if any good could be produced anywhere at any time. Smaller production facilities for localized sourcing. Would IMHO also be much more in line with a free market. Everyone would be free to source goods in any country or location of their choice. Coupled with open knowledge this could be a truly free market.

But will never happen because currently free market means one business is free to dominate and control a market.

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You're asking for decentralization. There's a reason you often get centralization in industries: higher productivity due to network effects and/or economies of scale. Even within China this is true, as some areas are particularly known for manufacturing (or specific types of manufacturing).

Spreading things out sound good until you realize it's doubled your costs or halved your productivity.

But I think we're missing an important point here: moving production to low cost environments just moves costs from business costs into external costs, putting them on society.

As for productivity, I think that's an issue that could be addressed but people generally avoid the answer to the why question.

> moving production to low cost environments just moves costs from business costs into external costs

[Citation needed]

Of course that can happen, but it's hardly guaranteed. If a company in the US moves a call center to a lower cost city, that's hardly foisting externalities onto anybody.

> people generally avoid the answer to the why question.

What does that even mean? What "why" question?

Typically when people say cryptic things like that it's because they hold some unhinged opinion, eg "Yes, schools in urban centers perform worse but nobody wants to answer the real 'why' question. Personally I think the black community...devolves into racist rant held up by racist 'science'".

So OP, you want to defend your honor by making transparent what you intentionally left opaque here?

>If a company in the US moves a call center to a lower cost city, that's hardly foisting externalities onto anybody.

Sure it does. That new small city then needs to upgrade their infrastructure to support that business.

It will never happen because of economies of scale.

What type of intervention of the free market do you approve of as an alternative that would incentivize local production over economies of scale? It essentially comes down to tarrifs and protectionism.

Free market means voluntarism. You say that consumers ought to have the freedom to source goods anywhere, but the only way to preserve this "freedom" is to either force producers to operate in unprofitable conditions (which is not stable-state) or force consumers to pay a premium for those goods.

If a product becomes unstable due to increased competition it's not exactly been stable before. Also the whole premium is quite off. You got good items for fair prices before factories started producing bread. Often at higher quality. I'm old enough to remember. Honestly seems like the current market is only working because of regulation and protections of all kinds. That to me is a clear sign of volatility.

what

It sounds like you're advocating for a centrally planned market that allocates resources according to a grand, rational vision. A free market will by definition be messy, sometimes inefficient, adhoc, and defy any notion of a grand vision. You have to trust the free market to produce the best results in the long run, and to be the most responsive to change (opportunity).

The “free market” cannot exist. It’s impossible.

All you can ever do is trade manipulation. By who and to what agenda.

Not really. The opposite. The current market is centralized a lot more than people want to see or admit. I had trust in the free market for a long time but it has not really materialized the best results. As can be seen by the current state of affairs. Everyone fighting over who gets to have money and production is not freedom, it's a war without guns.

Just to make this clear, a truly free market would be desirable but I don't see it materialize on this world.

> The current market is centralized a lot more than people want to see or admit.

You completely misread their comment. They said central planning, as in, a command economy.

Considering I talked about a truly free market, central planning then seems to be a weird reaction. Why would that be related? It's not like I suggested a Chinese system, I advocated for one which is free from monopoly and focusses on local production and diversity for sourcing goods.

A truly free market? But free from monopolies and adhering to <insert constraints>?

Kind of sounds like a regulation and not a truly free market.

Finally someone might get that the concept of a free market is a fairy tale

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