Comparing computer and healthcare industries makes almost no sense (besides extremely superficial ways) due to perfectly obvious reasons.
> making health care more affordable
Doubtful (since there is zero evidence of this working anywhere). Try to imagine how would this work for cancer and other serious diseases (hint: it wouldn’t at all for the majority of the population without some form of ins)
I am curious why you think they wouldn't work for healthcare since: a) they worked just fine before government started intervening somewhere mid-last century and b) their mechanisms (price signals, competition, law of supply and demand, etc) apply just as well like for any other essential goods (food, water, fuel, etc).
Healthcare industry as we know it today did not exist back then (the costs and available treatments are on another level).
> b) their mechanisms (price signals, competition, law of supply and demand, etc) apply just as well like for any other essential goods (food, water, fuel, etc).
Not really or only in a very superficial way and extremely basic way.
> While regulations - brought for our own good and safety, of course - succeed in increasing costs and add delays. Just see healthcare, housing and education for some sad examples.
As far as healthcare and education are concerned this is almost entirely an American problem. Some countries like Switzerland or the Netherlands have entirely private/non-state run healthcare systems but extensive regulation has kept costs relatively low and accessibility at very high levels.
Not true - it always existed (with different costs and treatments of course) and it was rather developed and affordable in the '50s and beginning of '60s before government intervention started in the earnest.
> Not really or only in a very superficial way and extremely basic way
Why and how? Feel free to expand and provide some examples.
> this is almost entirely an American problem
Not true. Health care and education are quite expensive in all developed countries, including where they are paid from our tax money then offered to us "for free".
> extensive regulation has kept costs relatively low and accessibility at very high levels.
How does that even work? I never heard of a regulation able to lower prices. Price controls only create shortages. Swiss private healthcare is quite expensive, but the competition on their (relatively) free market is keeping the costs from exploding even more.
Moreover, history is full of evidence that a pure free market begets regulation as a direct consequence of the natural desire to externalize the costs in a system. Pure free markets are an ephemerality in the world, undone by their own worst instincts soon after their creation.
Who said anything about purely free markets?! Markets are indeed over regulated around the world today. More so in Europe, than in the US, explaining why EU is lagging behind economically further and further. But much less so at the beginning of the last century where a tremendous amount of wealth and building got done in a very short time.
The truth is staring us in the face: the more we regulate (no matter how good the reason is), the higher the costs and delays. Culminating with the three broken markets of today: healthcare, education and housing.
> history is full of evidence
Please feel free to provide some then. The historical evidence I know (USSR and such) shows that countries that killed their free markets were unable to even feed their own citizens.
If you define criteria you will accept as evidence before I give you a list, I’m willing to do the work to show you that pure free markets produce outcomes that force regulation on them.
Finally, if you aren’t talking about “pure free markets” when you say that regulations are bad, then what the heck are we even arguing about? I haven’t said we should turn the US into the Soviet Union, just that free markets require some regulation. This should be as uncontroversial as stating that gravity exists. You have to go very far back in academic economic literature to find anyone arguing that free markets are an unmitigated good.
> countless times in American history
Please provide some examples then. The most widely touted, Standard Oil, was already losing marked to its healthy competition before antitrust action even started:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil#Legacy_and_critic...
Andrew Carnegie's Steel Co. - created a vertical monopoly in the steel industry by obtaining control over every level involved in steel production, from raw materials, transportation and manufacturing to distribution and finance. By 1897, he controlled almost the entire steel industry in the United States. In 1901, became part of the world's first billion-dollar business when it merged with a group of other steel businesses under the name U.S. Steel Corp. (ticker: X), to become the largest company in existence at the time, which remains among the largest steel producers in the world.
AT&T - operated as a monopoly in the telephone industry for many decades until 1982 when it was forced to break up into eight smaller companies, almost all of which have since become a part of AT&T again.
I am not familiar with the other 2 cases but I wouldn't be surprised if it was, again, government-granted or not an actual monopoly. Think about it, it's logical: why wouldn't competing startups attack a monopolized market? It's ripe for disruption, after all.
Monopolies can arise on the free market but unfettered competition will always defeat them.