6 ms·

America is not a "free market" capitalist country. I would say it's of the lack of a free market that enabled the wealthiest to capture that wealth that would o

America is not a "free market" capitalist country. I would say it's of the lack of a free market that enabled the wealthiest to capture that wealth that would otherwise have been more evenly distributed. There is an enormous amount of regulation in the US (and other countries) designed to make it nearly impossible to compete with the established actors in the market.

oblio 4y ago
The free aka perfect market does not exist. It's impossible to achieve in reality: - fungible goods (i.e. stuff like toilet paper where you have 100s of vendors most people can't really differentiate much in terms of end result): good luck with that for any kind of complex good - perfect information symmetry (i.e. the vendor and the buyer and seller know exactly the same about the product): can't happen when most buyers are individuals and most sellers are companies with full time people employed to work on their products - low barriers to entry for vendor: good luck, in the real world you need time, capital, experience, etc to enter a market, and even when you're there, there's stuff like brands, marketing, reputation, etc Etc. Plus, even if this absurdly perfect model would be achieved, you still have to put stuff like social welfare somewhere in there. Why? Because some people are just plain bad at basic economics (president Truman was close to dying in poverty during his old age), and you can't just let them starve to death.
- 34675904565 4y ago
  Nobody thinks a perfect market, or perfect anything is possible. It's just a theoretical concept. None of the imperfections you mentioned can be solved by a state or any other form of coercion.
  - oblio 4y ago
    > None of the imperfections you mentioned can be solved by a state or any other form of coercion. Says you, basically. All current markets have state intervention, and the best ones have good state intervention.

oblio 4y ago

The free aka perfect market does not exist. It's impossible to achieve in reality: - fungible goods (i.e. stuff like toilet paper where you have 100s of vendors most people can't really differentiate much in terms of end result): good luck with that for any kind of complex good - perfect information symmetry (i.e. the vendor and the buyer and seller know exactly the same about the product): can't happen when most buyers are individuals and most sellers are companies with full time people employed to work on their products - low barriers to entry for vendor: good luck, in the real world you need time, capital, experience, etc to enter a market, and even when you're there, there's stuff like brands, marketing, reputation, etc Etc. Plus, even if this absurdly perfect model would be achieved, you still have to put stuff like social welfare somewhere in there. Why? Because some people are just plain bad at basic economics (president Truman was close to dying in poverty during his old age), and you can't just let them starve to death.

34675904565 4y ago
Nobody thinks a perfect market, or perfect anything is possible. It's just a theoretical concept. None of the imperfections you mentioned can be solved by a state or any other form of coercion.
- oblio 4y ago
  > None of the imperfections you mentioned can be solved by a state or any other form of coercion. Says you, basically. All current markets have state intervention, and the best ones have good state intervention.