You can't create competition through regulation. Free markets allow competition and entrepreneurship creates it. You need both.
Regulations reduce competition by raising the bar to entry and the unforeseen consequences of compliance.
Regulations reduce competition by raising the bar to entry and the unforeseen consequences of compliance.
So, regulations are necessary part of free markets. The question is what regulations are good and what regulations are bad.
There are empirical and game theoretical examples where regulations create better outcomes than nonviolent free market competition. There are games where the tragedy of the commons occur i.e. Nash equilibrium creates bad outcome [0]. This is also true in the real world e.g. collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wNj9hOIt9g
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
And free markets imply free people - slavery is the opposite of that.
Taxing externalities is also necessary, and it's tax, not a regulation. But that is something we're still working on, with little success it seems. See the carbon/pollution international issues with China, Russia, Australia.
Also, a simple tax can not solve the tragedy of the commons for fisheries as long as fishing will remain profitable. Nash equilibrium involving full exploitation remains as long as there is a profit. Fish are not an externality that can be reduced to avoid taxation, but the objective. While cap on fishing will work.
Infrastructure is the usual example. If your company owns something like a cellular network or a local power grid, the EU requires that you let other businesses use it for a fair price to sell their services to customers. This regulation creates more competition and lowers the prices for customers, while simultaneously making businesses more efficient and less profitable.
Surely a marjet without competition, i.e. monopolised, is no longer free? Or what does 'free' mean?
it depends to whom you ask.
in the US, for a long time, anti-trust was kinda cozy with monopolies - they were accepted as the natural outcome of a free market: the most efficient solution.
In the EU there is more emphasis on market competition, and big monopolists are seen as problematic.
The same argument that justifies monopoly also justifies soviet-style central planning. It just changed the 'monopolist' in charge.
Do not confuse regulations made to fix even worse regulation with an actual healthy, competitive free market.
In Eastern Europe, after the fall of communism, people would lay Ethernet wire between apartment buildings to create ad-hoc communication networks. There were dozens of them. Today that is illegal and we only have a single Internet provider per city block.
This is literally wrong. OpenBanking only applies to the biggest banks and not little guys, and it allows little guys to access data stored in huge banks.
How does thay reduce competition? It reduces bar to entry
I can think of 10 startup banks like monzo and starling and have accounts in 4 of them, where is this lack of competition?
Is it also regulator's fault there is no competition in running water and sewer providers? In your world there is no such thing as capital requirements, barriers to entry, natural monopoly, all issues are summed as 'regulation = bad"
real world experience suggests the contrary is true.
What actions the US government took to "institute" Bell's monopoly?