[blakes]

I think it's really important to understand in order for a truly free market to succeed, is to have absolute transparency. The libertarian ideal of a free market includes transparency.

I believe that the most important thing to regulate is transparency itself. It is almost as if market regulation as we know it causes gaps in regulation in other parts of the market, and things like this happen. The consumer should be able to verify the complete supply chain of every product they purchase.

[fucking_tragedy]

How can you enforce transparency without regulation? The market has decided that supply chain opaqueness is acceptable. Regulation exists because market forces incentivize things society has deemed negative.

[blakes]

That is a tough one! I honestly am not sure, I imagine some sort of framework for corporate responsibility and transparency. Something like GRI [1] is a good start.

The way I see it, the transparency itself would probably need to be regulated. If an organizition is not following transparency requirements, regulators sanction or whatever that particular organization. I have no idea what that would look like or how it would be implemented. That is still a long ways a way.

The market has decided that opaqueness is acceptable because consumers are uninformed and transparency is not required. The market has taken advantages of holes in regulation.

I believe a free market is the ideal market, but the only way it is ideal is if it is completely and truly transparent. Regulation exists in part because of lack of transparency. If the market was transparent, it would (in theory) regulate itself.

I'm curious on your thoughts of what sorts of things market forces incetivize that are negative, I'm just trying to get a slightly better grasp of some of those things.

Clearly we are not ready for an economy like this yet. But someday. I honestly think transparency plays a huge role in humanities survival. Maybe I'm crazy, who knows.

https://www.globalreporting.org

[TeMPOraL]

The thing: market optimizes itself too. It's a dynamic system. So the real question to consider is what is market's fixed point. Or at least what's its phase portrait.

In other words - start with a perfect, transparent market with full and unbiased information available to all participants. Press the "Play" button. What happens? How soon will the market degrade itself, eschewing transparency and perfect information, because it's a more optimal point in the state space? Personally, I predict this is exactly what will happen.

[tracker1]

The libertarian ideal isn't no regulation, it's regulation that ensures transparency and leans towards increased competition not less.

[fucking_tragedy]

I know that further from the political mainstream you go, the harder it is to get people to agree on specifics, but I've yet to see a sect of libertarianism that is for market regulation of any kind for any reason be it safety, transparency, increased competition etc.

[tracker1]

Call me pragmatic...

[fucking_tragedy]

Who would regulate the market? What powers would they have to enforce their regulation?

[tracker1]

Things would have to be case by case in terms of moving from the federal government today vs closer to constitutional libertarian.

The FBI and DOJ probably would not go anywhere any time soon... removing certain limits on class action and civil suits would be a start combined with truth in labelling and marketing regulations. Reducing IP protections and trade secrets would help too... as well as transparency requirements. Civil suit, with enforcement action if non-compliance would be a start.

Like I said, I'm pretty pragmatic about it, but would prefer to move towards more civil action, and less govt.

---

Also, lets be real... even with more libertarians elected, the bulk of the govt won't be thrown out any time soon... but the goals should be, minimizing govt, encouraging competition and transparency. This can be done through more strategic legislation.

[nickik]

Im a libertarian and I disagree with you on this point. A market system should be efficient, our hole argument is based on efficiency.

What you propose is not efficient and no consumer would want to pay for this level of information, thus it would not happen.

The important thing is that if somebody claims something that is not true, its fraud, he can be sued, during a lawsuit investigation have to be made to verify and judge the case.

Voluntary groups could start labeling products that have all information available. Shops could require producers to do it.

There are many ways a free society can handle these problems. We don't know exactly what would happen, but we have lots or reason to assume that something along these lines would happen.