> There is no such thing. All the american monopolies are due to protection policies defending them from the competition, i.e. due to the government's interventions.
What level of suffering is worth preventing instead of waiting for the market to - hopefully, eventually - correct itself? While meanwhile the incumbent is using their considerable wealth and influence to suppress any new competition.
I'm positive you have a line, I'm curious where you draw it.
The question is rather, could you prevent suffering by regulating the natural self-organizing order.
The main point of Hayek was that the economy is like biotope: there are millions interconnected entities making decisions on their own.
Intervening the economy is like intervening the biotope, you are adjusting the system you have no clue about. Killing/dismantling one actor could cause a chain reaction of quite dismal consequences. For example Mao campaign on killing sparrows ended with a locust invasion.
The outcome of such anti-trust regulations is impossible to predict, so it could end up with broken supply chains, deficit, inflated prices etc.
I'm quite sceptical about this, I thing the remedy would be worse than the disease. If people are suffering and create a demand, I'd rather find what prevents the supply.
i agree intervening in the economy can have totally unforeseen effects... but if you think about it, we are already interfering in the economy by just having a set of rules (for example, you have to pay your creditors, have to make a profit or you go out of business, have to pay your employees etc)
the thing is, and again this is just my opinion of course, but when everything is based on capital and money, and that’s all that is used to enforce adherence to a system of economy, then only those with access to capital can affect change in the system...
the idea of regulation, at least in theory is that it’s a democratic set of controls on capital that a population feel s is important enough to push for (such as labor standards, or safety standards) and i find it hard to believe (as we can see from our own history) that those wielding great power will just do the right thing because the market pulls them there; people at the bottom with little collective share will have little collective power to affect them through market signals
i think at least we can agree that alot of today’s regulations are by corporations to protect thier positions and do no good, and that even well intentioned but not well thought out interventions can wreak havoc, but i guess we differ on what to do about it (i would prefer to have more democracy (e.g get corporate money out, outlaw lobbying etc) instead of just market based solutions)
What level of suffering is worth preventing instead of waiting for the market to - hopefully, eventually - correct itself? While meanwhile the incumbent is using their considerable wealth and influence to suppress any new competition.
I'm positive you have a line, I'm curious where you draw it.