Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Especially not ideological flamebait slogans.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That seems rather biased, Dan. While the 'daily reminder' bit is snarky dismissing it as mere flamebait or soganeering is unjustified and veers into trying to control the discussion. It's quite relevant considering the context.

It simply repeats a slogan that's favored by one side of the ideological abyss and rejected by the other. Therefore there's only a single bit of information in it, the bit that signals which side the comment is on. An HN comment needs more than one bit of information to count as substantive.

The police is there to protect the law and order, and the ruling class don't want the current order (them on top) to change.

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So people want DRM in their printer cartridges? They want to pay for patent-encumbered filesystems instead of free ones? They want ads that spy on which websites they visit? They want to be lied to about the harms of sugary foods [1]? About the harms of smoking? They want the dangers of climate change concealed from them, so that they cannot act in time and develop alternative sources of energy [2]? They want to be lied to about the dangers of lead in gasoline?

Companies make money in all sorts of ways, and producing what people want is just one of them. To pretend otherwise is willful ignorance.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

People accept those things as trade offs for things they want, yes. Free markets don’t give people what they want. They give people the trade offs they most highly value. They may not want DRM in printer cartridges, but they make the conscious decision to buy $100 printers with expensive DRM cartridges instead of $500 printers with cheap cartridges. They may not want less leg room on flights, but they make the conscious decision to click on a fare $3 lower in Orbitz. They may not want ads to spy on them, but they don’t want to pay for content. They want sugary foods, which are delicious. They want gas guzzling SUVs, and continue to buy them in large numbers even now that the “truth” about climate change is supposedly out.

Economies are about trade offs. The central thing marxists do not understand is that you cannot alter the nature of the trade offs through government. All you can do is move the equilibrium to a different place (at the cost of a deadweight loss).

You're applying the logic of perfect competition(which presupposes total market knowledge) to real-world consumer decisions, which are subject to multiple complicating factors from the paradox of choice to well-documented behavioral quirks.

You're smarter than this.

All the industries I’m talking about are highly competitive.

In order to function well, markets have to be correctly regulated. In particular, externalities must be accounted for. Energy markets fail to do that (CO2 emissions is a large externality) and are broken - I wager we wouldn't depend on fossil fuels for much longer if it weren't the case.

Precisely!

Police are there to protect the political ruling class and their power structure. Same with the military. This is why I am confused when people are "proud" to serve in the military. That's like being a slave used to build a railroad, which you will never use or benefit from.