• chakan2@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      This is textbook late stage free market ideals at work. This is how the free market always ends.

      • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        X - The system is broken.

        ✅ - The system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed.

        • Petter1@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          There are lots of different kinds of markets, like phone market, grocery market, goldsmith market, etc.

          The governments have to interfere in many markets all the time, that there aren’t monopolies forming or Price-fixing agreement be done, which would lead to prices go ridiculously high, or last companies in markets fucking up taking tons of knowhow with them.

          • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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            7 days ago

            Yes but the statement was “this is how free markets always end”. And I’m just wondering if the commenter has actually been around to see “free markets ending.”

            • chakan2@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              That’s a fair comment I guess…but it’s the reality of the game. The US was a free market through it’s early history and today is the result of that.

              It’s just how the free market ends, always. It starts with a few winners consolidating, abusing their monopoly and buying their government protections, and poof…welcome to late stage capitalism.

              “Free Market” people always disregard human nature at it’s worst. There will always be people and orgs that game the system. You simply can’t prevent that. The US is absolutely an end game free market.

            • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              I think they were less talking about them ending as much as them tending towards the monopoly state over time.

              • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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                7 days ago

                Got it. Saying “this is how free markets always end” if they meant “free markets tends to move towards monopolies” confused me.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Yeah, the huge companies would dominate over small companies even more than they already do.

        • ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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          7 days ago

          Copyrights and patents are literally government enforced monopolies for huge companies. Without them, there would be a lot more competition.

          • lud@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            Really? Calling it a government enforced monopoly seems very disingenuous.

            Good luck trying to make a movie without Disney stealing it or making an invention with really effective solar panels or something without the biggest companies stealing it and bankrupt the original creator.

            Copyright and patents protect everyone involved in creation and while there are a LOT of problems with the systems. Removing it entirely seems like the biggest overcorrection possible.

            • ConsistentParadox@lemmy.ml
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              7 days ago

              Companies such as Disney have armies of lawyers to enforce their monopolies. Copyright and patent laws are designed exclusively for the rich.

              Disney can very well “steal” other people’s work and get away with it under this system. Without such laws, everyone else would be able to “steal” from Disney as well, which would level the playing field.

              • lud@lemm.ee
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                7 days ago

                The playing field won’t be level without patents or copyright. Why would I an average idiot make or invent something if the exact second I show the world my invention someone takes it and mass-produces it within a week? I have no chance to raise capital to make the invention myself if you can already buy it in every store. The Chinese manufacturing industry essentially does this already but to a lesser degree. Imagine if every company did that. No small companies or individuals would stand a chance against Goliath.

                And again the word monopoly is very misleading in this discussion, especially when it comes to copyright. There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from making superhero movies just because Marvel/Disney owns a lot of superhero rights. You are just not allowed to make an exact copy of their movie but you are allowed to make similar movies all day long.

                Another example is a professional photographer. Do you really think that they should be awarded no rights whatsoever to the photograph they took?

                The same obviously applies to huge companies as well. Why make a movie if it’s available for free download literally everywhere.

                How do you propose that the makers of content, inventions and products get paid? Donations? Get real, that won’t happen.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        Or trade secrets. “Perfect information” is a bitch. Not to speak of “perfectly rational actors”: Say goodbye to advertisement, too, we’d have to outlaw basically all of it.

        • Peruvian_Skies@sh.itjust.works
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          6 days ago

          To be fair, we absolutely should outlaw at least 99% of all currently practiced forms of advertising and make it so that new forms of advertising have to be whitelisted by a panel of psychiatrists, sociologists, environmentalists and urban planners before they’re allowed.

        • frezik@midwest.social
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          7 days ago

          Trade secrets don’t need to be enforced much by law. You can create an ad hoc trade secret regime by simply keeping your secret between a few key employees. As it happens, there are some laws that go beyond that to help companies keep the secret, but that only extends something that could happen naturally.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            To get closer to the free market there would have to be a duty to disclose any- and everything that’s now a trade secret, no matter how easily kept. To not just get closer but actually get there we all would need to be telepathic. As said, perfect information is a bitch of a concept.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              7 days ago

              Being free to innovate and keep your own ideas to yourself sounds like it should be part of the free market though.

              Forcing people to disclose their (mental) secrets seems bizarre.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                7 days ago

                I’m not arguing for any policies, just explaining what would be necessary to make the theoretical model of the free market a reality in actual reality: It assumes perfect information and perfectly rational actors, it’s a tall order.

                  • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                    7 days ago

                    Adam Smith’s. He pioneered rational choice models in general. Came up with the whole shebang that 20yold econ 101 students love to ignore in favour of “free market is if I get a fat payout”.

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          7 days ago

          Are you telling me that the axioms behind the simplistic model are wrong?? shocked-pikachu.jpg

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            It’s not so much that they’re wrong is that they’re impossible in practice. Axioms, by their very nature, cannot be justified from within the system that they serve so “true” or “false” aren’t really applicable.

            The model does have its justification, “given these axioms, we indeed get perfect allocation of resources”, that’s not wrong it’s a mathematical truth, and there’s a strain of liberalism (ordoliberalism) which specifically says “the state should regulate so that the actually existing market more closely approximates this mythical free market unicorn”, which is broadly speaking an immensely sensible take and you’ll have market socialists nodding in agreement, yep, that’s a good idea.

            And then there’s another strain (neoliberalism) which basically says “lul we’ll tell people that ‘free market’ means ‘unregulated market’ so we can be feudal lords and siphon off infinite amounts of resources from the plebs”.

            • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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              7 days ago

              Wrong as in not sound. An argument can be valid assuming its assumptions are true. The argument is the model, which really is a set of arguments. Its assumptions which are taken axiomatically are as you say impossible, therefore they are not true (which I called wrong). So the argument is not sound. I’m not saying anything different than what you said really, just used informal language. ☺️

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                7 days ago

                Its assumptions are inconsistent with the conditions in the material world, but that doesn’t make the model itself unsound. A model is not an argument, definitely not in the political sense, it’s just a model.

                You can also include the model in the material world, as was done, at the very least, when the paper introducing it was published and that doesn’t make the material world unsound, either: The model lives in organic computation machines which implement paraconsistent logic in a way that does not, contrary to an assumption popular among those computation machines, make those paradoxes real in the material realm they’re embedded in.

                Everything is, ultimately, sound, because the universe, nay, cause and effect itself, does not just shatter willy-nilly. “ex falso quodlibet” would have rather interesting implications, physics-wise. For one, an infinite amount of Boltzmann brains would haunt an infinite amount of physicists.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      What’s government enforced about it? Is ARM the only allowed chip designer for cellphones?

      • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        license enforcement is a thing because if someone bypasses it you can sue them, which is a government interaction. Technically, claiming X means nothing if there’s no one that enforces your claim.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Yes but that rule protects you the same as it does them. They can be a monopoly if nobody else can get their chips sold but they cannot be a government enforced monopoly unless nobody else is allowed to sell chips.

          • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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            7 days ago

            That’s your interpretation and that’s fine but I understand that they have a monopolies because their patent is broad enough to be hard to create alternatives, and the patent is government enforced. That’s how I understood it at least.

            In any case, I don’t really mind if you want to keep using your interpretation, I was just trying to rationalise what the other commenter said and explain what I though was their point of view to say what they said.

            Have a great day.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              7 days ago

              That’s not just my opinion. That’s the definition going straight back to Adam Smith.