[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.