"Failure of the Free Market" is actually a failure of government

[alexanderg]

I've been fielding a lot of questions on my channel about "the free market" and a common retort I get is an example of Big Corporations running wild -- that is, until you consider that the only reason they have all this power is because they made a bee line for the very government institution which is supposed to protect us from such excesses...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvVVObVO59Y&list=UUmkSQppUOY6r7qd-sbcftBQ

[ausppc]

What free market?  In the same manner of question, can anyone name a geographic locaton upon which capitalism is currently practiced? 

[philschneider]

Yeah this happens all the time.  I have a buddy I like to argue anarchy with and he always brings this up.  Last time we talked I told him to list specific examples of how monopolies are bad and how capitalism fails.  Every single example he used involved government giving corporations money, power, and ways to ignore laws.  He eventually gave up realizing ever single reason he did not like capitalism was because a government existed.  Yet of course that was not a reason to think about anarchy or capitalism positively.  Most people just never learn.  I expect to have this same conversation with him again in the future.  Maybe even indefinitely or until he stops bringing it up.

 

I find the best way to talk to these people is to explain that America does not have a free market.  It always puts a damper in the anti capitalists day when I tell them that China is more capitalistic and has a better free market then the US does.  I just tend to simply explain that their endless examples are not the free markets fault, but that of the government.  Try by asking them how their complaint would still be true without a government to bribe.  They will eventually give up, or maybe it will sink in one day.