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Riversntallbuildings t1_j2s1e3h wrote

Reply to comment by ianitic in European economies have developed stronger anti-trust regulations, more competitive markets, and more robust consumer protection than the US in the last 20 years. The reason for this is the EU. EU member states are incentivized to empower a strongly independent pro-competition regulator. by smurfyjenkins

Yeah. Free markets are not free when bias and special treatment is allowed.

I am still mourning the loss of net neutrality for consumers in the U.S.

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agwaragh t1_j2ubkzg wrote

> is allowed

This is the irony. "Free" markets don't work without sufficient regulation.

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Riversntallbuildings t1_j2uc4bj wrote

Correct. Private enterprises will always look for, and find, ways to establish protected markets.

One of the specific cases I point to is when Hollywood clawed back the fair use rights that consumers won during the VHS era.

Content is content, and yet somehow, the courts allowed digital content (and digital markets) to be treated differently.

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mmerijn t1_j2ufape wrote

Free "markets" do, but what we have is a little bigger than a market nowadays. Social relations and reputation tended to follow you around back in the day, nowadays you can defraud millions of people before you get a reputation that might catch up to you for some people.

So yeah, we need regulation. but mostly because the concept of a market doesn't scale up perfectly from tens of millions of people to billions of people (due to the market now being more global than ever).

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agwaragh t1_j2uif4l wrote

You appear to be ignorant of history.

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mmerijn t1_j2wcf52 wrote

That was exactly what I was referring to though?

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agwaragh t1_j2y2uuu wrote

The fact that monopolists and unfair trade practices have always required regulation? That certainly doesn't sound like what you said. I mean this was from a time when the whole developed world was only a few tens of millions. But if you want to go back even further, check out Leviticus or Hammurabi's Code. There's a remarkable amount of ancient writing about trade disputes and the laws to deal with them. The very advent of writing was motivated by a need to better control commerce. The utopian ideal of a free market has never existed at any time in history. Belief in it is a religious faith and nothing more.

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