[walden42]

There is always an incentive to make a product better and as cheap as possible in order to make a profit. That's how the free market works. Your experience shows you that government intervention, which is so prevalent in most markets, kills off competition and leaves the "big players" to make whatever decisions they want. These "big players" exist thanks to the state.

It's a vicious cycle: government jumps in, makes competition harder (whether with taxes or regulations) -> smaller businesses have trouble competing with large players -> larger businesses take advantage by offering worse service to cut overhead costs -> customers complain, ask for more government regulation -> makes competition even more impossible -> and so on.

You can observe this cycle in every industry, including food, ISPs, etc.

Before you bash the free market and show me example of how it doesn't work, first look and realize that what you're pointing out to me is not actually a free market.

[atmosx]

> Before you bash the free market and show me example of how it doesn't work, first look and realize that what you're pointing out to me is not actually a free market.

That could be said for Nazism, Communism, Socialism and possibly every other socio-political out there: It's not the system, it's the implementation that's wrong. But I don't buy it. I used to be liberal myself, but now I don't believe in the skilled vs the unskilled, it's more likely to be the trained who had opportunities vs the untrained who had none and most likely you and I are in the first category.

Out of curiosity though, could you answer the following questions:

* Do you believe that education, energy, water, garbage, railways, lines (as in phone-lines, the network) should be private hands?

* What happens when a player is so big that with every move disrupts the market? The state should step-in or let everything flow naturally?

[walden42]

> That could be said for Nazism, Communism, Socialism and possibly every other socio-political out there: It's not the system, it's the implementation that's wrong.

True, those arguments can be said there, but don't apply here. Those are utopian ideas in that they require every individual, including the governing bodies, to be a saint in order to work. Not so with the free market, as a corruption in one organization leads to the ability for others to rise in their place (no "too big to fail" scenarios).

> Do you believe that education, energy, water, garbage, railways, lines (as in phone-lines, the network) should be private hands?

Yes. A lot of this work is already contracted out to private companies, which do a much better job for a much lower price. There's no reason to think they wouldn't do it themselves to make a profit. Which brings me to...

> What happens when a player is so big that with every move disrupts the market? The state should step-in or let everything flow naturally?

The state IS the biggest player so big that every move disrupts the market, thus creating more "big players" =) For example the government makes contracts with the big players, in the billions of dollars. That's tax payer money that's going to corporations instead of local smaller businesses, and the other guys can't compete. This is just one small example.

There are some good discussions on these topics here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/search?q=corporat...