Marie PhD
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The Free Market

6/4/2015

2 Comments

 
The free market will fix everything says every libertarian ever and corporations are overly burdened with regulations preventing them from making money. this is called regulatory capture supposedly. It works thus: BIG corporations chat to their friends in government saying "we need to regulate competitors, you government types should create legislation that will make it more difficult for new players to compete against us. Such as the need to buy expensive new equipment, employ some kind of specialialist, meet some impossible requirements, ..." depending the field.

Recently a senator from NC was asked for an example and cited employees being forced to wash their hands after using the bathroom as being burdensome on business. 

While it is extremely unlikely that employees not washing their hands will kill us, except perhaps if our food comes into contact with e-coli if we don't get antibiotics in time, the usual answer is that the 'free market' will solve the problem. How is the free market going to solve this problem unless we notice the employees are not washing their hands and spread by word of mouth that this restaurant doesn't oblige employees to was their hands.

The senator does say the restaurant would be obliged to put up a sign saying that employees aren't required to wash their hands - but then again this is another burdensome regulation and may cause customers to go else where, when they might not have if they were kept ignorant, and hence would cut into profits.

We tried letting corporations not have regulations and they behaved extremely badly which brought the regulations down upon them. Corporations can't be trusted because corporations try to get away with what they will try to get away with. 

And ultimately the free market will work because corporations will get their way and have all regulations removed and they will sell us rat poison in our cookies, the free market will finally fix that because all their customers will be dead, then the business will go out of business, so the free market will work! (Um Yeh)

The biggest problem with assuming the 'free market' will fix problems is that it takes time for people (or other corporations), which is what the market consists of, to react. It takes time for information to disseminate. People are creatures of habit, as are corporations, because corporations are operated by people. People are busy doing other stuff and can't continually monitor for new businesses and better competitors - people call it loyalty, the reality is it takes time to find better competitors.

The main emphasis on free markets is to promote free trade deals, it is spin from libertarian think tanks to promote things like the TPP. But mostly the free market works because people perform mind experiments that prove the free market works when no one has ever seen a free market and if there ever was one, this is the end result of the experiment.

I know people who operate small businesses and don't experience any regulatory capture. Perhaps those who do need to be more adventurous and engage in creative destruction. Perhaps people who think washing hands is too burdensome for their business should get into another business anyway.
2 Comments
southern beale link
6/6/2015 11:48:33 am

As I wrote about the "Unwashed hand of the free market" at the time, all Thom Tillis was doing was replacing one regulation requiring employees wash their hands with a different one requiring restaurants post a sign if they opt out. It's still a regulation! Except his shiny, sparkly free-market regulation burdens consumers by making us hunt around for a dang sign, as opposed to burdening employers by making them make sure their employees wash their hands.

And that, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with Libertarians. Their "free market" game is really just unburdening businesses and instead burdening the general public. Because the "free hand of the market" doesn't just happen, it means we consumers then have to devote an inordinate amount of our daily lives to researching every single business transaction to make sure that public safety, environmental, workplace, etc. standards are all being met.

And frankly, I don't have time for that. I have a life. I'm not going to spend my day making sure every restaurant I visit makes their employees wash their hands, doesn't keep their food at unsafe temperatures, doesn't pollute the local rivers by dumping grease into a stream, pays their employees a fair wage, etc etc etc ad nauseum.

Reply
Marie
6/6/2015 12:02:03 pm

Really good point, the sign could be posted under the cash register - some where no one will notice.

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