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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

The free market enables the collective desires of humanity to determine how to allocate scarce resources. Prices act as signals that balance supply and demand and inform producers where to allocate capital and invest in innovation. Money is a store of value that enables smooth commerce.

If you try and mess with this system - say, by having a government that tries to set prices manually, or flood the market with printed money, you will no longer have an economy that reflects the collective desires of humanity but one that reflects the desires of a small elite.

Luckily history provides numerous examples of the flaws of such things, if you are willing to study and understand the consequences.

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> The free market enables the collective desires of humanity to determine how to allocate scarce resources.

No. No it doesn't. Free market gives rise to companies Nestle who monopolise access to clean water and sell it at profit, all future be damned.

> Luckily history provides numerous examples of the flaws of such things, if you are willing to study and understand the consequences.

Indeed. History has also shown that unrestrained free market is the worst system there is, and has shown it again, and again, and again.

Software has zero marginal costs and infinite supplies, and therefore the free market would only ever give it a price of zero. The reason that it does not is because of the government interfering.

Economics is very clear on this. You tax negative externalities and subsidize positive externalities. Discovering new open source software is a positive externality. Subsidize it.

No, every copy of software always has a marginal cost above 0, it may be fractions of a cent, but it's not zero.

There is no such thing as a free market really. All markets are created by governments, and all currency is created by governments through the imposition of taxes.

Within this framework some prices are allowed to fluctuate but the price level is set generally when the government spends and all other prices derive from that.

Governments also influence pricing through financial and corporate regulation. It’s obviously a terrible idea for a government to attempt to decide how all of society’s resources should be allocated and to designate prices for each and every item or service that might be produced, but it’s just as bad of an idea to think that the “free market” can govern itself.

Epic Healthcare person that posts on here, how has all the government $$$ for mandated EMRs worked out in actual implementation? That would be an interesting example of how well this model works.

This is an incredibly idealistic and naive view of capitalism that no doubt 99% of people on this website are across.

Fortunately we’ve got plenty of examples of the myriad shortcomings of strict free-market capitalism, namely the fact that it has never survived outside of very constrained, sterile, low-importance environments. After x generations, the systems start to fall apart, and inevitably someone has to augment it with some socialist policies.

Failing to get your nose out of your economics textbook to look at the myriad real-world examples of a free market still reflecting the desires of the elite, is a massive shortcoming.

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