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We have seen a lot of deregulation in the past decades, and I do not think that the experience suggests that more capitalism is the way to go. So the OP's argument seems to be, if we just deregulate even more, then - contrary to experience - we get a better system. Which sounds quite similar to the argument Leninists use to defend the Soviet Union. Hence the quip about the "Austrian New Man".


> I do not think that the experience suggests that more capitalism is the way to go

The point is if you're looking at The Real World, there's no evidence -- pro or con -- for or against a free market system. We've never experienced one. Regulated markets aren't in any sense comparable to an actual free market.

Even the smallest regulation in a free market system makes it an entirely different beast. For example if you decide to impose a tariff on a single industry in an economy, that alone will result in massive inefficiency -- and as a result, wealth disparity -- such that the system can't meaningfully be called a 'free market'. At all. It's just a regulated market economy, like we currently have.

Hence you can't take mixed economies with varying degrees of 'free-marketness' and infer from those how actual free markets will work.

There's the question of whether implementing free markets is even possible. It would certainly take a lot of barricading of human behavior from the market -- is that achievable? I don't know.

But the point is we've never tried it, so why not try it before we shoot it down?

>contrary to experience

The only experience we have is of regulated markets. There's no "contrary to experience" to ascribe to free markets, because we've never experienced free markets.

We've theorized free markets. Again, models we've built say free markets would likely be extremely efficient and beneficial for all of us.

But we've never seen, empirically, free market anything. As stated above, a mixed economy -- even one that's, like, 99% 'free' or whatever -- isn't at all comparable to a true free market. The smallest of tamperings with a true free market turns it into a completely different beast, when we're looking at things whole-economy scale.

>So the OP's argument seems to be, if we just deregulate even more, then - contrary to experience - we get a better system

In sum, OP's argument isn't that we should 'deregulate even more'. It's that we've never seen a free market, but should try one. Trying a true free market isn't a matter of 'deregulating more', it's a matter of deregulating entirely. Blank slate, start again.


>Even the smallest regulation in a free market system makes it an entirely different beast.

Bullshit. Purest bullshit. No theoretical ideal can ever exist 100% pure in the real world. If you claim that it must, then you're building castles on clouds.

>In sum, OP's argument isn't that we should 'deregulate even more'. It's that we've never seen a free market, but should try one. Trying a true free market isn't a matter of 'deregulating more', it's a matter of deregulating entirely. Blank slate, start again.

This is a bullshit argument which relies on a known poison becoming a not merely effective but transhumanly miraculous cure-all pill when taken in 100% purity. You might as well become a homeopath.




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