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I have libertarian tendencies, but I don't think the free market is the answer to all our woes.

Free markets are for efficiency, laws are safety.




Yeah, you don't really want free markets - you want well-designed markets. It just happens that some of the easiest ways to wind up with a poorly designed or implemented market is by doing the things that the free-market folks rail against. For example, making the regulations for interacting with a market so onerous that participants can't engage in the amount of market behavior that they need to fill their needs.

On the other hand, a lack of enforcement against fraud and deception can also ruin a market. For a good example of this, American consumers do not have to check for counterfeit rice, while Chinese consumers do.




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