[TeMPOraL]

People seem to be assuming that free market capitalism means companies are perfectly happy about competition, because competition is what we expect to see under perfect free market conditions. No, companies do not like competition; any sane (not to mention rational) actor in such a system will do anything it can to ensure its own monopoly. Pitting various actors with such tendencies against each other is kind of the core idea of market economy. It's pretty obvious that some actors will temporarily get ahead, and then capitalize on that to get further ahead. Hence inequality, centralization and TPP, which is another stepping stone towards companies being in charge of governments, and not the other way around.

As for unemployment, there are many things that give rise to it, but part of it is definitely market optimizing things so much that people are being pushed under minimum survivable wage and have to rely on (the bad, communist) welfare to survive. Automation is playing a serious role here, even companies know that (hence the "don't vote for increased minimum wage, or we'll have no choice but to replace our workers with robots" ads that started to appear).

[dovereconomics]

Obviously, companies want less competition, but if they use a political system to do that, it's not free market capitalism.

[TeMPOraL]

The line dividing "market" and "political system" is blurry and pretty arbitrary, like most lines in models we make. There's nothing in reality that makes meddling with politics unkosher; if it increases profit, then the incentives created by the economy will make companies choose to do so. The problem isn't that they're crossing some arbitrary lines - the problem is with the incentives that lead them to it.

[lprubin]

I think it's an important question of whether or not lasting monopolies are possible without political intervention.

[TeMPOraL]

A big enough monopoly looks surprisingly like a nation state. I don't think you can really disconnect those two worlds.

[timtas]

Seems clear to me. The market consists of voluntary associations. An association is voluntary if it is entered into without coercion. The "political system" more properly called the state, depends on coercion. There is no purpose to a law other than to involuntarily compel, by violence if necessary.

[TeMPOraL]

Voluntary trade at the level of basic needs is bullshit. Fear of hunger or death from sickness is coercion. I have to have a job, and I have to buy food. Companies are very happy to exploit that. A lot of blood was shed a century ago to establish some minimum safety net for this "voluntary trade".

[timtas]

> Read up on e.g. lives of miners in the United States

We all know the about the suffering of industrial workers. What's less well known is the far greater suffering of the pre industrial revolution peasant. What's also less well knows is that the advances in conditions and prosperity that bring us to today were will under way before, and had very little to do with, progressive state interventions.

[TeMPOraL]

Whether or not there was a progressive reduction of suffering, it doesn't in any way support the statement that real-world market is based entirely on voluntary trade. We still have to eat; in the past this coerced us to deal with nature, today it coerces most of the world population to deal with market economy.

[timtas]

You must obtain food but not from any one specific provider. No company will long "exploit" you (Hmm, where have we heard that term before?) unless they are protected from competition by a coercive state.

[TeMPOraL]

Read up on e.g. lives of miners in the United States in the past. It happened many times that a private interest controlled all your life - your housing, your food, your tools. Companies can, and if allowed will, create conditions where competing with them is impossible. One of the reasons we have states is to prevent exactly that from happening.

[Sammi]

What you present is a naive fantasy. There do not exist any corporations that do not engage in coercion. Coercion is human nature. Corporations are run by humans. In the real world things are messy. Politics and capitalism go hand in hand.

[timtas]

> Politics and capitalism go hand in hand.

Indeed, that's the problem. The state gains support of corporations by "partnering" with them. I will certainly not dispute that a free market system is often perverted by state cronyism.

[timtas]

A corporation cannot kill me or put in a cage and call it legal.

[TeMPOraL]

In the west. Yet. They can and do that in poor/failed states, even if indirectly (by funding local mercenary armies).

Also, there are many that could kill you and get away with it even in a western democracy. It may not be "legal" if the public ever found out (it won't), but the end result will be the same - you'll be dead.

The current, legal solution is to drive you to financial ruin. Equally effective as means of coercion.

[reagency]

Government regulation is one specific form of power. Human hunger is another, hence the trouble that started the labor movement / unions.

[Demiurge]

And if they use private guns for hire to do it?

[pm90]

Of course established companies do not like competition, it is the startups that do. If we didn't have free markets, then MS would not have risen up to replace IBM (for example; maybe not the best example). What we hope is that MS is better at doing what IBM used to do.

[TeMPOraL]

Yes, but as the (hypothetical) MS is fighting against IBM, the IBM is free to employ every trick in their book, including shoving things like TPP down our throats, to get rid of the rising competitor. No rule of the market says that they should just give up and die, or that they should just compete on merits, ignoring the influence that comes with money and established position.

[vezzy-fnord]

If we didn't have free markets, then MS would not have risen up to replace IBM

Considering the United States was (and remains) a mixed market economy at the time, your statement is incorrect.

[lkjhgfd]

A mixed market means some markets are free, some unfree - right?

[reagency]

MS success started with a very generous legal contract, backed by copyright fee regulation protections, then became the anti-competiitve progress-blockimg behemoth they replaced.