this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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This is it basically. People think free markets are bad for humanity, but all the problems are for when people just reach out and stop the free market from happening.
That’s government’s job: maintain an actually free market, where new people can come in and give people what they want, when the existing guys fail to do so.
It takes active input of energy to maintain that state of affairs. There will always be people who want to take control of it in unfair ways and get profit without providing the best value to the people, and it’s in our collective best interests to stop those people. So it’s legit to spend taxes on things like breaking up monopolies or maintaining infrastructure.
Free market doesn’t mean it happens naturally. It used to happen more naturally, because the total amount of power a person could wield over others was limited. But ever since we’ve had armies and ultra wealthy families and huge companies, all of which can exert power over individuals, a free market is a thing which requires government enforcement to maintain.
I think our problem might be that our government isn’t financially dominant. It is militarily dominant, and so it’s able to maintain the relative safety that comes from having a monopoly on violence. But the government doesn’t have a monopoly on financial power and so it can be overpowered by money.