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by tathougies 2543 days ago
Free market typically means a market in a system where the government provides some guarantee of protection over fundamental negative rights to (for example) life, liberty and property. In that frameworks the answer to your questions:

> Does the market a business exists in give you the freedom to not be burgled

Yes, to an extent, freedom of property guarantees that anyone who burgles you will be punished

> Does it give you the freedom to not have to pay for healthcare for your employees

Yes. In a free market, there is no employee. Employees are simply one-man/woman businesses that you exchange money for in exchange for labor or time or a task (in the case of salaried employees). There is no reason why someone paying a business should have to explicitly pay for that business's healthcare. The employed business, even if a single person, should charge enough to pay for their health insurance.

> Does it provide some level of free training to those employees?

No. Nowhere in a negative right to life, liberty, or property is there a promise of free education.

> If you're a fisherman and there's another fisherman does the market ensure that other fisherman won't exhaust the ecosystem?

No, the ecosystem exists independent of the market (it preceded it), and there is again no right to ecosystem partitioning in the right to life, liberty, and property.

1 comments

That is just one definition though, the "free market" that America has right now reads as "Yes, No, Yes, Yes" in particular though I'd disagree with the last point - a fair free market would incorporate things that tend to be cost externalities into the true costs of goods - leveling a mountain to mine coal or fishing a bank to extinction are costs that society cares about and are things that should be incorporated into the cost.

To reinforce the point a bit - if, for instance, over fishing is unpunished, regulated or otherwise incorporated into costs then failing to over fish will result in a competitive disadvantage that the market will punish. In this case acting in a way that ensures a long term benefit to society is being actively punished by society's rules - and the system is illogical.