alt Hacker NewsAll "free market" ideals require no/low barriers to entry in order for the market to be "self regulating". Said absence of barriers to entry almost never exists, hence the idea of completely free markets is completely naive - you need regulation.
Markets also cannot account for externalities. If those externalities are something you care about (e.g. the environment you live in) - you need regulation.
Economies of scale abound in most markets, and this tends towards monopolies and regulatory capture. If you don't want monopolies, because you value your freedom as a consumer - you need regulation.
This is very basic economics - I wish it was more widely taught.
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Is it really basic economics that free market leads to monopolies? I thought this is not something where there is a strong consensus about ; free market advocates will actually argue that this is regulation that leads to monopolies.
>Markets also cannot account for externalities. If those externalities are something you care about (e.g. the environment you live in) - you need regulation.
Markets account for externalities via ownership and torts. This was gutted in the 1800s in the US where a judge ruled people couldn't sue for the impact of environmental pollution, in the name of the "greater good" of industrialization.
It more basic than that, it is what used to be considered common sense. The United States has screwed basic education, effective communications is not even taught - the seed of common sense, and has been producing intellectually crippled wage slaves for that last 40+ years. It's going to require a culture revolution to pull out of this nose civilization-wide dive, and that revolution is not going to happen in the USA.