[nickpp]

I believe the free market is like Darwinism for economic organisms: unintuitive and little understood by the regular folk, however working just fine nevertheless and able to solve and explain any issue without needing the intervention of an intelligent designer/regulator.

People will still look for a planner though…

[DSMan195276]

> I believe the free market is like Darwinism for economic organisms: unintuitive and little understood by the regular folk, however working just fine nevertheless and able to solve and explain any issue without needing the intervention of an intelligent designer/regulator.

I feel like that's a bit of a charitable description considering the whole monopoly problem (and various other regulations in place to make the system actually work). Perhaps we just disagree on what "working just fine" means though :)

[nickpp]

Monopolies (including the so-called "natural monopolies") are not a problem for the free market, but rather opportunities - bounded only by human ingenuity, imagination and capacity to innovate.

In reality most monopolies we encountered were actually created or sustained by governments, through their dear friends patents and regulations which raise the barrier of entry and compliance costs, create unintended second-order effects and generally dampen competition.

[DSMan195276]

"Guy's you're just not doing it right" or "there would be more competition if we would just remove those pesky regulations on the meat packing industry". It's very convenient that the answer is always just "remove regulations" as though most of them weren't put in place to solve existing problems that otherwise weren't getting solved by the market itself.

I'll give you a different suggestion - what you're saying may work fine on a small scale, but not on a scale where consumers can no longer realistically have any idea how something was produced. Consumers can't select against things they don't know about or don't understand.

[nickpp]

> may work fine on a small scale, but not on a scale where [...]

"Evolution may work fine for a small organism like bacteria, but it would never evolve something as complex as the human eye"

> consumers can no longer realistically [...] Consumers can't select

Your lack of trust in consumers is only surpassed by your lack of imagination. Repeat after me: "If consumers actually need something, a free market will provide".

Too much choice and quality too hard to check? Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, Trip Advisor and any other aggregator with reviews like Booking.com or even Amazon will help. Food not killing me instantly (thanks, regulation!) but sickening me slowly with production-boosting chemicals (for nothing...)? We now have organically grown, local co-ops and various near-sourced grass-fed ethically slaughtered meats.

No regulation to thank to, just the good old free markets.

[DarylZero]

Markets are also created and sustained by governments.

[nickpp]

Nope. Markets require just a couple of free participants willing to exchange goods or services. No governmental involvement there.

[DarylZero]

"Markets are" <-- actual existence

vs.

"Markets require" <-- some kind of logical construction

[ClumsyPilot]

While you are admiring Darwinism, keep in mind that all-natural ecosystem collapse is a thing, and 6 all-natural mass extinction events had >90% of all living things disappear.

[WalterBright]

> 6 all-natural mass extinction events

Are you sure about that? Or have people just not discovered the cause yet?

Pick one, let's explore it.

[ClumsyPilot]

Sure, the Oxygen Catastrophe, 2.3 billion years ago.

I do, wonder, given that all the extinctions happened before humans existed, what possible alternative to 'natural' could there be, aliens?

[WalterBright]

> possible alternatives

Asteroids, vulcanism are the usual culprits. There also could be cosmic ray bursts from exploding stars.

> the Oxygen Catastrophe

There seem to be many hypotheses about that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

and it isn't clear to me there was a collapse, but a gradual replacement.

[ClumsyPilot]

"Asteroid and vulcanism are the usual culprits"

That is nature, thats my point - it is brutal and murderous.

If you don't want to die from them you don't rely on Darwinism and if you don't want economic collapse and famine every time a new strain of flue evolves you dont wait for 'muh free market' to save you.

[nickpp]

Nature is unpredictable and always changing. This is why any attempt at planning markets is destined to fail. And it has - the specter of famine was always-present during my life under communism.

Darwinism means adaptation. In markets, when people are free and allowed to keep their (majority of) gains, they will struggle to learn, change and adapt. Planners are neither motivated nor able to do either. They are the ones bringing the economic collapse. Look at the ham-fisted way they "avoided" last year's crash: not only we all paid a 9% tax, but we are now in a more fragile position than ever, dependent on a monetary policy we know is completely unsustainable at best.

[WalterBright]

You might want to investigate the economic collapses caused by government run monetary systems. Like the Weimar Republic you mentioned - that collapse led to Nazism. Not a ringing endorsement for central banking, amirite?

BTW, are you enjoying the 9% haircut we all got in the last year courtesy of central banking?

[WalterBright]

P.S. Evolution is not a stable system, and free markets aren't stable, either. Socialism promises stability, but history shows it's even less stable, as it is unresponsive to market changes.

[chii]

so it only happening 6 times over the 2.3 billion years is not a bad record. Human designed systems have barely over 5000-10000 years of history, and most only last a couple hundred.