[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.