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kortillatoday at 4:29 AM2 repliesview on HN

Property rights are regulation. You’re just vehemently agreeing with me. Markets filled with laws that make entry difficult are subject to monopolies.


Replies

cogman10today at 12:23 PM

Ok, let's imagine property rights are gone. Now it's impossible to build a fiber line without also employing an armed guard of that line. Sure, the open market allows for anyone to build out their lines where ever they like, but since we've eliminated all property rights and laws it means the most natural thing to do to your competition is sabotage.

That means if you are a new comer, you have to employ significant military strength to guard and defend your line going in. Otherwise, existing powers will simply stomp it out as soon as they get a whiff that someone is trying to compete with them. That, or they'll simply take your line by force.

That is probably the most difficult form of entry because it requires someone to be independently very wealthy before they could dream of putting in new infrastructure and it requires them to enforce their own property rights since there's no government doing that.

Are you an anarco-communist by chance? That's about the only group I'm aware of that would advocate for the complete elimination of property rights, but they also usually don't advocate for a "free market".

danaristoday at 6:52 AM

If property rights are regulation, then so is anything that allows you to ignore them.

Once you get down to the level of property rights, the only alternative left is total might-makes-right anarchy.

Property rights are some of the earliest and most basic things protected by governments—indeed, to a large extent they precede governments, being protected with force by the people who wish to assert them.

Wipe out all regulations, all laws, all property rights, and try to run fiber across someone's property without their permission, and they're likely to come out with a shotgun and start shooting everyone digging. Follow the steps logically from that point, and you'll fairly quickly start reinventing governments and regulations.