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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives.

But if users really wanted agenda-free products and services, then those would win right? At least according to free market theory.

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> according to free market theory

Not once in the history of tech “the free market” has succeeded in preventing big corps or investors with lots of money from doing something they want.

I'm actually leaning towards the above comment being satire, it's hard to believe anyone on HN could believe in a free market in 2025.

This is yet again confusing a free market with an unregulated one. A free market is a market, where all costs are included (no external costs), so that market participants can make free decisions that will lead to the best outcome. To price in all external costs, regulation is needed.

Sure, if the common denominator user is at least as savvy as the entire marketing and strategy departments of these trillion dollar companies, then sure, users will identify products that are not designed according to their best interests and will then perfectly coordinate their purchases so that such products fail in the marketplace. Sure.

One of the problems with that idea is that sometimes it will be far more profitable to refuse to give consumers what they want and because eventually making the most amount of money possible becomes the only thing that matters to a company, what users want gets ignored and users are forced to settle for whats available.

Maybe in the long term, but not necessarily in the short term.

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