[ancap]

I can think of many products which are life-saving which are readily available from countless producers for relatively cheap. The difference here is just as gwright has pointed out and you have a corpus of regulation which makes this particular product more expensive and/or chokes out competition.

The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated.

[Ironchefpython]

> The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated.

So you're saying that Petroleum Exporting Countries would never say... create an Organization intended to increase the price of oil?

Or the DeBeers wouldn't collude with diamond producers to limit the availability of diamonds to increase the price?

Or that manufacturers and distributors of light bulbs, lysine, copper, cleaning powder, vitamins, glass, milk and machinery would never, ever engage in price fixing?

I want to live on your planet, where capitalism is so nice and perfect that companies rush to give away all their profit by competing the marginal cost down to zero without any of those pesky regulations.

[icebraining]

So you're saying that Petroleum Exporting Countries would never say... create an Organization intended to increase the price of oil?

How does that help your case? The members of that organization are governments, not companies. OPEC is regulation.

[jaekwon]

I'm curious why people are downvoting this.

[WalterBright]

In the software business, with pretty much zero regulations, competition has run the price literally to $0 for broad swaths of products.

[Ironchefpython]

> In the software business, with pretty much zero regulations, competition has run the price literally to $0 for broad swaths of products.

That's like saying that price competition is alive and well because banks will give you a free toaster when they charge fees to loan your money back to you.

But to address the specifics of the software industry, software is a complementary good.

This has been the driving force in the price of software for decades: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html

And it's true today. The biggest contributor to Linux is... Intel. Because it sells hardware. Google gives you a free browser so it can sell ad space.

[WalterBright]

I know many software companies with essentially a single product, which they give away. They make money selling service contracts, which enough customers buy to make it worthwhile.

The price is still $0 and there are still no regulations on it.

Most (all?) commercial products have complementary products. This is hardly unique to software. I seriously doubt the theory that medical products have no complementary sales.

[hackuser]

> The only sectors of the economy where significant, lasting shortages occur are the ones most heavily regulated

That's not what economic theory (and practice) say, I'm pretty sure. For example, unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas. Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people. Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons'. Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products.

The free market is very good for some purposes, but it's not a benevolent God that finds solutions to all our problems. It's just a very useful tool in the toolkit.

[ancap]

I would first like to point out that in the context of this conversation the definition for shortage I am using is that there is a shortage of a good or service where it once was readily available. Sure I could, say, take a rocket ship, to mars and denounce the absence of internet connectivity, but that's not what I'm referring to here.

>unregulated electrical, communication (including Internet service) and transportation markets have resulted in shortages in rural areas

Again, according to my above definition this is a slightly different topic, but it seems highly dubious that a lack of regulation is what has resulted in shortages of internet service is some podunk town.

>Unregulated food and housing markets (and many other markets, including Internet service) result in shortages for poor people

The most significant factor limiting the availability of low cost housing is municipal regulation, not the absence of it. I'm not aware of any place in a developed nation which has a shortage of food. It seems what you are getting at is the options may not be affordable for some, but that is a different concept from a shortage. Furthermore, it is a bit of a stretch to refer to the food and housing markets as "unregulated". If there are any shortages in these markets it's certainly not due to a lack of regulation.

>Unregulated fishing creates shortages of fish - a 'tragedy of the commons'

I have commented on the idea of "tragedy of the commons" many times. It generally leads to quite a tangent in the conversation, but if you're truly interested I'd be happy to discuss why the problem does not lie with a lack of regulation.

>Monopolies and oligopolies eliminate whole categories of products.

A true, lasting monopoly is only possible through market regulation which strangles out competition. All the textbook examples of "monopolies" (Standard Oil) were not monopolies at all. In fact in the early days of electricity there was so much competition in the big cities that the big guys lobbied hard to get their monopoly privilege.

[hackuser]

You make many claims in strong langauge, but that's not itself meaningful. They are at odds with what I learned from economists, and from what I believe is the very widely accepted consensus in the field (though I might have a few details wrong). Regulation is a normal, effective response to market failures, which sometimes result in shortages.

Of course, I'm not providing any citations myself!