[cl0rkster]

I'm not sure you fully grasp what your opponent means and why they mean it when they say "free markets." As an ideal in the market place of ideas, free markets as a concept aren't ever created by ADDING regulation. Free markets generally imply that a system left to itself will eventually regulate itself through market forces and will produce both more output and more freedom as a result. Unfortunately, most people learn that we have free markets in America. What we really have is nothing like a free market. It's some strange mixture of chrony capitalism, elitism, and government regulation. I know this isn't a healthcare post, but it's a perfect example of a misaligned system that sometimes tries to use the word "free market." If the market were actually free, the government wouldn't pick winners that abandon a motive based on patient and public health outcomes in favor of profit. Now that we aren't forced to buy a garbage product anymore, family doctors have been leaving HIPPA behind lately and doing a subscription model with patients and making HEALTH OUTCOMES the priority and not profit. That is a free market competitor... Not the government itself or it's regulations. Free market ideals give money to common people and let them choose. Otherwise, they are just "free" slaves and not participants in the market.

[paulryanrogers]

Without any regulation markets tend to be captured by large players. Once these players have enough money they become quasi governments.

Government regulation does not have to lead to regulatory capture. Though it does require vigilance.

[cl0rkster]

It absolutely doesn't need to lead to negative outcome... if the government simply lays out rules for fairness and enforces them. The problem is when they get themselves so bureaucratically involved in something that there is no freedom left to do anything "free". Healthcare and ISPs are great example of this. One should have the goal of patient outcomes. The other should have the goal of high speed, highly available access. Both of those are things the government should entice through it's regulatory framework. However, the least of us always choose to become politicians... So that doesn't happen.

[viklove]

> One should have the goal of patient outcomes. The other should have the goal of high speed, highly available access. Both of those are things the government should entice through it's regulatory framework.

You're not describing a free market. In a free market the goal is always just to make the most amount of money possible. Once you've achieved that goal, you can just drop prices, absorb losses via debt, and freeze out competition. That's why free markets don't work and need heavy regulation.

[cl0rkster]

Yes, when people lack morals, you are correct. In a world where your every word, thought, and idea isn't pre-chewed and then fed into your brain through some form of lighted rectangle, that is completely false. There's a very good reason that some people are DEEPLY inspired by the novel Atlas Shrugged. It took Ayn Rand an enormous number of pages to make her point. More than an internet comment ever will. Most people will read that and watch a lighted rectangle fill their head with what "new" ideas might be in this book. Almost nobody will read it. Even fewer will speak up. Markets can't be free if people are in mental slavery. Like Morpheus said... Most people will fight to protect the system that enslaves them.