How the hell did you come to blame the free market for the actions of a dictator?
I mean... really?
The banking system is a complete cartel (do I have to introduce you to Ben Bernanke?), and the housing market has at least a dozen federal agencies regulating it; tons of price floor regulations, mandated easy credit to inflate prices all over; etc.
It's not a clear cut case as you make it to be. I would also go on and say that the free market has indeed solved famine whenever it's been allowed to exist in the food market. The poorest places in Africa where thousands (millions?) still die of hunger, are the same places where private property is disallowed by law/custom.
There is just no possible way that telcos anywhere, in any civilized state, doesn't have an agreement by law with the state to utilize the common infrastructure. Whenever roads and electric poles are "public", cable and telephone markets are necessarily, not a free market.
Anything and everything can be argued to be "essential"... where's my free food, free water, free house?
What remains of the argument is simply an appeal to tradition.
They are still free to do anything they want - with their money.
I don't even have to know the specifics to say that, in order for the prices to be artificially high in the scenario above, the plant owners had to have a superior advantage over other entrepreneurs. Most likely, outside entrepreneurs weren't allowed to build a competing plant, or build a competing grid. The "monopolist's" prices can only be as high as the return on investment isn't high enough for others to undercut them.
Not a free market.
Republicans aren't particularly free market either...
In fact, the "deregulation" talking point has been used and abused so much by both parties it barely means anything anymore. Turning a government-provided service into a government-mandated one shouldn't be called deregulating, as it is often done. It paints the illusion of a free market where there isn't.
Competition needs not actual competition; as long as the market is free for new investors to come in, competition already exists. The "monopolist" can only profit as much as it would cost the second best entrepreneur to come in. But that's something I suppose only Austrian Economists fully understand, so it's inevitable that people will be clueless for decades to come still.
Also, the state is the biggest monopoly of all. Those inherently opposed to monopolies should consistently oppose it - yet most do not. They look for the greatest monopoly to swallow all others, never accomplishing anything that was allegedly intended. That's because the state cannot increase competition, it is analytically impossible. All the state can do is restrict, forbid, restrain. Every time it breaks a monopoly for example, it creates a cartel of higher prices.
A monopoly who just outperforms everyone else isn't a monopoly over the market, since others can come in and compete.
I say that in respect to your use of the word which is correct, but that it's useless. A few men own an entire industry, so what? What's wrong with that? If they did something criminal, or used the government, blame them for that. But not for offering services and products cheaper and better than anyone else.
If you consider education a personal investment, it makes no sense to subsidize it any more than subsidize everyone the materials to build a rocket to travel to the moon...
Each person should be responsible to pay for their investments in full, and they are responsible to weight the benefits v. cost, in my non-aggression-principled view.
Disagree...though I love the Prisoner's Dilemma, the problem here lies on the subsidizing of the schools and tuitions. If the government weren't stealing from everyone to pay for these malinvestments in education, people would naturally be less likely enroll in them since they'd be paying in full.
I would in fact say that the prisoner's dilemma here is the exact opposite you proposed. Using public funds for your own benefit, aka stolen property acquired through taxation, would be defecting. Not using it would be cooperating. So it's the defectors that are stealing and misappropriating resources, you see...
This will feel rushed but I apologize I won't have time to answer.
1- The smaller company does not own its customers. Therefore, if the customers choose to leave and go to a bigger company, no harm was inflicted upon the smaller company. It has went broke because it lost its customers, customers which again, were not its property. So no theft took place, nothing wrong took place. The smaller company got "outplayed" in the efficiency game, rightfully so in the opinion of its customers; for if they wanted the smaller company to live, they would not.. leave...
2- The state of african countries is no more evidence that socialism works in comparizon to the western world any more than it is proof that christianity works. Too many confounding variables, too little controlled experiments.
3- Democracy is no proof of concept on efficiency. It cannot work logically. Why is it, that you do not trust your neighbors to respect you, but you trust them to elect your overlords (aka representatives)? How is it that a population can be so dumb as to require oversight, yet so smart to elect its overseers?
Would you, over a thousand years ago, claim to me that monarchy not only works, but is the best system ever since breakfast, because no other civilized nation in the world had evolved past it at the time?
I reject democracy just as much as I would reject monarchy, because I value individual freedom over any little anecdote you can give me supporting serfdom. Serfdom to a king, to a slavemaster, to your neighbors's "elected officials", only the overlords change...
HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib!
