this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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The free market is going very well here
This is 100% capitalism. It's not free market to have a goverment-enforced monopoly.
This is textbook late stage free market ideals at work. This is how the free market always ends.
X - ~~The system is broken.~~
✅ - The system is working exactly as intended and must be destroyed.
Problem is that most people who say that, have nothing to replace that works better.
Liquid democratic socialism
Sorry have you been around to observe a lot of free markets ending?
Gestures wildly at current state of things
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.”
I think they were less talking about them ending as much as them tending towards the monopoly state over time.
Got it. Saying “this is how free markets always end” if they meant “free markets tends to move towards monopolies” confused me.
When did it start?
You are correct. There would be no copyrights or patents in a free market.
Yeah, the huge companies would dominate over small companies even more than they already do.
Copyrights and patents are literally government enforced monopolies for huge companies. Without them, there would be a lot more competition.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What definition are you going by?
Adam motherfucking Smith's. He pioneered rational choice models in general.
Are you telling me that the axioms behind the simplistic model are wrong??
shocked-pikachu.jpgIt'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".
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. ☺️
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.
What's government enforced about it? Is ARM the only allowed chip designer for cellphones?
Copyrights and patents
That's not a government enforced monopoly. A government enforced monopoly means nobody else is allowed in the market. Like utility companies.
Lots of Utilities are consumer cooperatives which is funnily enough Socialist, but the people working there wouldn't like to hear that.
Nobody else is allowed to sell these phones without licenses
But they can sell phones.
That's called "monopolistic competition". They can't sell the same phone they were already making.
Yes. I'm not saying it's not monopolistic behavior. I'm saying it's not a government sanctioned monopoly.
Perhaps I should sell some without a license.
Okay? The company will be the one to enforce their license.
I didn't agree to their license.
But that's not criminal. That's civil. That's no different than a contract dispute. It's not government enforced, but it may be government mediated.
You could disobey a civil summons....but that's a different issue.
Lol copyrights and patents are capitalism
I agree
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.
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.
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.
That's not just my opinion. That's the definition going straight back to Adam Smith.