#freemarket — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #freemarket, aggregated by home.social.
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Just a reminder that #capitalism does not equal #freemarket. #China dumped a ton of startup money into a lot of companies, assuming that 95% would fail. Those 5% went on to make billions in a free market with a ton of healthy competition. Norway also holds a majority share in all of its companies. Now the government owns a majority stake, and all profits go directly back to taxpayers. The best rise to the top, and the rest die, like free markets are supposed to work. Meanwhile, in the land of the free, we dump tons of #subsidies into giant #corporations that make enough money to lobby politicians for it, and we get no profits back from our taxes. We give around $1T a year, or 1/4th of our yearly spending on corporate subsidies, and never see a dime back from it as they continue to dodge taxes. Capitalism is about who owns the means of production, and it's never the taxpayers or the workers. -
This Is Neoliberalism ▶︎ Introducing the Invisible Ideology (Part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myH3gg5o0t0#neoliberalism #predatoryCapitalism #SocialContract #Hayek #JamesMcGillBuchanan #MildredFridman #SchoolOfChicago #FreeMarket #CorporateWelfare #Economy #Politics
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I've been listening to the #freakonomics episode on #adamSmith. It reminds me that the power and benefits of #capitalism aren't because it ensures "free markets". The benefits come from intense competition, which makes the vendors better and the products cheaper. Pretty much the entire success of the modern world is built on this #competition (+ #scientificMethod).
Unfortunately, the natural course of a free market, driven by well-known and well-taught business strategies, is to avoid competition, by using customer lock-in and other anti-competitive moves until you get to effective #monopoly power. Once you have monopoly power, you can go into harvest mode, raising prices and spending less, mostly on protecting the "moats" around your monopoly.
What we really need is not #freeMarket, it's #freeCompetition.
So when you hear a public policy debate or a business tycoon going on about "free markets" you should ask yourself -- would this make competition easier or harder? Would it give consumers and customers more choice or less choice?
This is one of the main reasons I have devoted most of my career to running or helping #startUps. A new underdog entrant is the essence of competition and expanding choices. Unfortunately, any startup that is successful enough to become dominant in its industry, becomes anti-competitive and can become a drag on society's progress.
Whew, I didn't expect that to be so long! I better stop now. Please let me know what you think.