There aren't only two options - the free market, or soviet russia. there are many more.
In my opinion, there are never enough deodorant brands. If a new entrant wants to make a new product, it will succeed or fail. It may compete on price or quality, it may drive out another brand, it may expand the market for deodorant by targeting a type of skin sensitivity that wasn't targeted before, it may do any number of things.
But there will never be enough deodorants. There can always be room for one more, and to prevent an individual for trying to make another is the moment we go on the path to Soviet Russia.
Look at the impact near free college, the GI bill had on tech. People all over the place started shit.
It can and needs to happen again.
That perfect deodorant is denied us because the person who could produce it is extremely likely to be trapped econonically.
What you are getting is endless variations of the same shit from competing board rooms.
What is worth what to you?
Strong words. I'm somewhere in the middle. i'm not offering to send anybody to any Gulag. But taxing some useless products ? or structuring market competition towards real benefits and not bullshit ? sure.
This is a false dichotomy, and the happiest nations on earth have a mix of market regulation and individual freedom.
And, that's an odd dig at life in Soviet Russia. It certainly was not the worst way of life -- I've known quite a few people living in all parts of the world who grew up in the Soviet system and longed for it, wishing for a return to that way of life while knowing it'd never happen.
I'm not exactly in favor of a command economy, but seriously, how many of these 80 types of deodorant -- or any comparable consumer product -- are fundamentally different from one another, as opposed to being distinguished only by their branding and marketing?
GP made no general statement of this sort. Misrepresenting other perspectives is boring.
Parent poster said this plainly, I'm not sure how you could read it another way.
The base argument is that we don’t need 80 brands of deodorant, and the fact we have so many is a colossal waste of resources, duplication, and moral failure of society.
Whereas I see 80 brands of deodorant and think it’s a wonderful example of how hard entrepreneurs work to satisfy all manner of wants and needs, ultimately driving down the price of deodorant and giving me a range of options. A government bureaucrat managing the country’s only deodorant factory could never possibly match the range of options and preferences that the market has provided me.
This is the fundamental difference in philosophy between real socialists (aka, not “keep the market but make healthcare free” milquetoast socialists but “make the private sector illegal” socialists) and free market advocates. I prefer a world that constantly competes to satisfy my needs, and all of the “waste” you see is just the process of satisfying everyone’s needs.