The free markets need regulation, or they stop being free.
Anyway, the point is just that one doesn't expect companies to be your friend. You expect them to pursue their own interest, and thankfully their interest and your interest overlap quite often - and mutual, voluntary exchange of goods, service, and currency occurs.
Are there things I wish Amazon, for example, did differently? Of course. And the wonderful thing about the free market is that if enough of their customers become unhappy about some issue or other, another company can come along and serve those customers. Of course that might not happen, and that's fine. Nobody is claiming that a free market guarantees that everybody gets exactly what they want.
There are very different forms of self-interest, the one implied here is of the very shallow, short term kind.
Note that this is not to say that I (or anybody else) engages in strict, robot-like, mathematical optimization of all transactions to ensure that our best interest is served down to the .00000000000001th place. We, as human beings, employ satisficing[1] for a lot of our decision making. But the fact that I buy from Amazon when I could save 50 cents by buying from Walmart instead, or that I tolerate Amazon showing me a few ads when I'm shopping, is neither here nor there.
This is a fallacy. People often engage in transactions that aren't in their interest- believing in the moment that they are. Or said another way, there's a difference between long-term interest and short term interest, and people often don't see their long-term interest clearly. Or said still a different way, there's a big difference between happiness and pleasure, and people sometimes engage in pleasure in detriment to their happiness (roughly from the Dalai Lama).
I'm not talking about the 10^(-14). I'm talking about real decisions where there is an information asymmetry. And meth.
We used to live in a world where a retailer or manufacturer would stand behind their product and not let anyone sully their name. Since today's consumers seem to lack the ability to discriminate between 'cheap' and 'value' we are in the world we're in.
One particular retailer I'm fond of in this regard is Home Depot. If I have any problems with any of their merchandise, they take it back, no problem. They stand behind what they sell and I appreciate that.
Courts apply laws. Laws defining and providing remedies for comemrcial frauds are regulations of the market.
No, courts are arbiters, sometimes of the law, sometimes of civil disputes, such as contracts.
> Laws defining and providing remedies for comemrcial frauds are regulations
That is true, laws that apply to contracts are regulations, however, they are not necessary for remedy.
If I have a contract to receive "A spoon product id xyz as created by Sir Porky Pig of 123. Main, CA USA" and anything other than that is delivered, it's a breach of contract at least and fraud at worst. I could sue for damages. What regulation is needed for this transaction? If someone were to deliberately intend to deceive me, that is fraud, and there are already laws for that.
The things they define what is an enforceable contract and what remedies are available for violations are, again, laws. Civil law is as much law as criminal law.
> That is true, laws that apply to contracts are regulations, however, they are not necessary for remedy.
Yes, they are.
It is law which defines what is a contract, and law which defines what remedies exist for breach.
> If I have a contract to receive "A spoon product id xyz as created by Sir Porky Pig of 123. Main, CA USA" and anything other than that is delivered, it's a breach of contract at least and fraud at worst. I could sue for damages. What regulation is needed for this transaction?
(1) A law defining when an enforceable contract is formed and how the enforceable terms are determined.
(2) A law defining the parameters on which damages are legally compensable from breach, including setting standards for traceability of causation of the harm to the breach, degree to which the I hired party is or is not obligated to act reasonably to mitigate damages, etc.
> If someone were to deliberately intend to deceive me, that is fraud, and there are already laws for that.
And such laws are regulations of commerce.
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.