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Comment by netcan | Hacker News Reader

I had a related comment on another thread earlier today. Different context, similar point.

"Free Market" is a big hairy term. But, the definition of free market that includes (or expects) all the emergent benefits attributed to free market is limited to a certain realm. Markets with barriers to entry (emergent or regulated, high fixed/marginal costs, any structure that lends to oligopoly, financialization, and bunch of other market characteristics (including interventionist policy) result in markets that are not free in that sense. There is no creative destruction, highly competitive dyanamics and such.

The financial markets have never (and IMO will never) resemble the market for toiletries or music festivals. Neither will many other markets: transport infrastructure, for example, for different reasons.

The free market is an abstract concept, a model. It explains some markets better than others.

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The definition of a trust has also changed. Before the '70s, a merger that would result in a single company owning, say, 20% of a market would be a red flag. Nowadays, you have giants in any mature industry: it's the nature of capitalism.

Since I like the idea of free market, I wish the market size of any company was limited to 15%, to truly allow competition and diversity of players. However, our economy is now global, and unless all the other countries play by these same rules (which I find highly unlikely), it will be a race converging to a few giant players and the occasional disrupters.

This. The real irony about the banks is that by heavily regulating banks and explicitly backing them, we also implicitly allow this sort of abusive behavior towards customers.

Well, no, because the problem is not the regulation, but the lack of enforcement of the regulation. And that happens because the political appointees who runt the agencies are too close to the banks they are supposed to be monitoring. If Wells is making changes to the loans without properly getting the court's approval, that's fraud on the court and clearly illegal. Getting a criminal proceeding against Wells or any of its employees requires the DoJ to agree to take action, which seems highly unlikely.

During the fallout from the housing bubble, it became apparent that many loans had not been properly transferred as they were sold from one investor to the next. The result of this was that many foreclosures were brought with essentially forged papers--servicers worked overtime trying to cover up broken paper trails. The courts in some states, esp. Florida, looked the other way as this bogus paper was passed in front of them.

In other words, regulation is a great system, except it always gets corrupted by the politics of the regulators?

I'm very supportive of regulating banks, both in theory and in reality. But we can't just wish away corruption and influence. Especially since so much financial activity is highly technical and the only people knowledgeable enough to create and enforce reasonable regulations are the same as the people conducting those activities that need to be regulated in the first place.

I'm not sure of the fix, here.

Like anything else, it's a political issue. Meaning: citizens have to give a shit about it, be informed, and be vocal about it with their representatives. Republicans in Congress just voted to roll back Dodd-Frank, and are aiming to get rid of the CFPB. Why? Because the CFPB is actually trying to protect people from shit like this.

Everyone is kicking the blame elsewhere. First, the banks, then lack of regulations, then too-much regulations, then imperfect regulations, then corruptible regulators, then finally the people that don't participate in politics.

The more I follow politics, and the media in general, I am leaning towards describing the entire thing as a giant soap opera where the media only "comments" or "gossips" instead of reporting facts and assigning provable blame. Everyone just passes off blame, no one really can hold anyone else accountable, and the cycle just repeats constantly. This is a fault of the system in that it allows blame to be passed along like that. The problem never really being addressed, just half-assed by each batch of politicians so that they can simultaneously take some blame, take some credit for trying, and also not be held accountable in any way.

ok, so we've abandoned the notion of objective truth and everything is all about the narrative.

the interesting question is whether or not there ever really was a cycle where the citizenry were informed, and could collectively influence policy.

even if we were just being naive, the abandonment of that model doesn't seem to have empowered the populace - seemingly the opposite.

>"ok, so we've abandoned the notion of objective truth and everything is all about the narrative."

Essentially, yes. Everything is relative, and since we have no base-principles to infer complex laws/rules/behavior from, we're constantly bickering with one another about minute details.

>"the interesting question is whether or not there ever really was a cycle where the citizenry were informed, and could collectively influence policy."

That's an interesting question. I can't say I can think of such a time. But I guess as a seemingly-intelligent and connected society with all of humanity's knowledge available at our fingertips, we should be striving for such a thing. Not defending an already-broken system just because we've decided it's "good enough".

It's nigh-impossible to actually do any sort of "corrective" maintenance on the system we have in place. Just look at Trump, or Brexit. The much-touted "checks and balances" is actively hindering his policies from being enacted (the one that got him voted in). Additionally, with Brexit, it's exposing just how complicated and intertwined global "contracts" and laws are between nations. In both cases we have giant behemoths of laws and processes in place to simply stunt any sort of correction or movement in any direction (whether good or bad). At that glacial pace, I don't think our life-spans are enough to see things through, or see drastic change or experiments when it comes to the models of government we've already-defined and have available.

The checks and balances you deride are not abstract concepts, words do not leap from paper and take action. The checks and balances you disparage are people who disagree, which actually is how it's supposed to work.

One thing I've learned as I've grown older is that the penalties for these things are absolutely malleable and the law can say "no, there's no passing the buck, the bank is responsible." Or the consumer. Whatever the politics of the day say should happen.

Mitigate regulatory capture with transparency, accountability, publicity. aka "daylighting"

Daylighting, or "sunlight as disinfectant," is great in a world where shame works and the appearance of rectitude is valued.

But we are seeing in US politics a world emerge where shame doesn't work, where players don't even try to appear honest, and where the very idea of consensus factual external reality is under attach.

In such a world, it will take a lot more than daylight to nudge good behavior from folks. It will take actual fear of being sent to jail.

I hear ya. I don't know how we got to this state, and I'm active player. Complacency?

The silver lining is that Trump was a wake up call. Many, many of my non-political friends contacted me and asked "What do we do? How do I start?" Our boring party meetings have triple the attendance. Any thing that needs doing now gets done.

For my part, I started a book study group, mentoring my friends how to be activists. For example, an upcoming homework assignment is testifying at a public hearing (local city or county council). Most of us have never even attended a meeting before.

Exciting times.

  I'm not sure of the fix, here.

1. We need a currency which supply and distribution of isn't under the control of corruptible humans.

2. We need to teach humans how to manage their own money and not give it away willingly to corruptible humans.

"Well, no, because the problem is not the regulation, but the lack of enforcement of the regulation. "

Problems in complex systems with large numbers of variables, attractors, etc are not solvable by just doing a single thing (if it was, it's not a complex system :P)

This kind of "if only x" thinking, IMHO, does not lead to actual solutions. It usually just leads to some other gravity well of the system, where now someone else says "if only y".

Prior to heavy regulation, we allowed the same sort of abusive behaviour, except it would be followed by a whole bunch of people, who had no hand in the impropriety, losing their life savings.

If you want to give ammunition to anti-capitalist movements, I strongly endorse returning to this model.

Of course, if you want to give ammunition to anti-capitalist movements, I also recommend that we continue to bail out the people who did have a hand in the impropriety.

No we don't. Nobody is responsible for this behavior except for the banks that do it. They are run by adults who are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their actions.

According to our president, they are just taking advantage of loopholes in the system... Anything else would be practically irresponsible?!

> The free market is an abstract concept, a model. It explains some markets better than others.

It is also an ideal; a status to be strived-for.

Yes. The fact that these banks are effectively branches of the federal government shouldn't dissuade us from trying to do better.

But you're not allowed to do better in the presence of the state. The regulations essentially dictate the way that you have to do things, which is the way that the banks are currently doing it. And you have very little chance of competing with them at that level.

Hogwash.

We're allowed to involve ourselves in the politics and push to update, modify, and otherwise "improve" the regulations.

There's too much of a "set and forget" mentality when it comes to government.

IMO, that's due to all the fear mongering over governments being bad. People feel obligated to then fight for private corporate power.

These things don't just "happen". They're planned and documented in government record. We often call them laws. They are specifically tilting the playing field.

Get involved and tilt them back.

And just how involved have we been able to get? They've proposed and passed laws with objection before even they know what is written. Many laws are effectively written by industries which they will benefit and then passed to benefit the politicians. When foul play is called out, someone unaccountable falls on their sword while the regulation that benefits cronies and stifles competition remains on the books until "the most powerful" comes along to influence change. In none of these steps are the average citizen involved. Did the average citizen vote to have laws the effectively regulate away business and consolidate power in all industries to a few companies that are in bed with the government? If so what good is empowerment when you're part of the issues.

>"Get involved and tilt them back."

Kind of easy to say when you're part of a majority. I'm part of an actually-oppressed-by-law minority. By virtue of Democracy, my minority's say has very little effect unless it's shared by the majority.

>"We're allowed to involve ourselves in the politics and push to update, modify, and otherwise "improve" the regulations."

It's always a game of compromise based on who has more numbers. Until such a time as arbitrarily small groups can self-aggregate within an area and split-off from a larger governing entity, it'll never be any better for minorities.

We're both part of the exploited majority. I'm not sitting on fuck you money. I grew up in a trailer on gov cheese, eating spam, being told I'm a mooch for not being born rich.

I'm 1/4 native american, though I look white. I knew my 100% native american relatives. I heard the stories, passed down. I literally smashed some racist a-hole in the face while hassling my obviously native american grandmother, among numerous other encounters. I mean it's easy to say you know what I am, and not have a clue.

Don't stand up to the machine itself then. Stand up to your family, friends, and neighbors. Challenge them to find ways to get off these services and avoid mindless consumption.

I've been helping people setup Raspberry Pi's with Syncthing to share their private files (mostly pictures). Fuck Facebook and Snap. Undermine them.

I am seriously weirded out by the tech scene, with all these smart folks that mindlessly go work for these companies rather than using their knowledge to simply help their neighbors solve problems. Narcissists and sycophants the lot of them.

Our time and effort are the means of production. Point them at alternative solutions. It's actually easier than you think

Yeah, this is somewhat heretical but I feel like democracy works best with monoculture, not the pluralist society that we have. Which is sad, in a way, but it seems like maybe the US is just too big, maybe we should embrace federalism and shift more and more power to the states. That way Kansas can go full Somalia and California can become a Nordic satellite state. Maybe everyone would be happier? Seriously.

Homophily

"Do better"? Us, and what army? With the possible exception of Sam Altman, none of us has any non-negligible agency in the political realm of any nation, let alone our own.

And it's not just an issue of quantity: we aren't the people who control the mass media and thusly the opinions of the majority.

Is it? I feel there are other things to strive for that are more important than if we have a "free enough market" or not.

Perhaps, but you'd be surprised at the number of issues that would be solved by every market being "free enough". Of course, by "every market" I must also include the market on aggression, wherein government is, by definition, a (localized) monopoly.

Why?

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