Markets aren’t governments, but they have raised the global standard of living vastly beyond our ancestors. They all happily do long term planning, just look at VC funding for risky investments that won’t see returns for years.

Markets existed for six thousand years, they predate ancient egypt. It is scientists and engineers who raised our standars of living, and they appeared recently. It is absolutely perserve for proponents of markets to take credit they do not deserve.

Take the invention of Penicilin, Alexander Flemming raised our standards of living while working at a public hospital. It was british and US governments who established mads manufacturing of it, not markets. The inventor never became a billionaire.

Most inventors never do.

Years mean nothing, you have to invest in decades.

And you still haven't addressed the issue of western co.panies selling weapons to regimes that want to see us dead - that's quite a critical flaw, don't you think?

So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion.

You couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence.

And that’s just the start as slavery, guilds, gender, etc all limited markets.

Throughout history you can track a huge wealth boom whenever places opened up their markets. England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places. It was actually far more influential than inventions like the early steam engine.

Its not it’s. damn auto corrupt

> England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places.

So let me get this argument straight: 1. Slavery and serfdom are bad for the economy. We are talking pure economics, not morality 2. Markets have freely sold and bought slaves for thousands of years 3. Slavery predates the concept of a government, it predates writing and predates ancient egypt 4. Abolition of slavery required intervention of government and violence

5. Therefore you have just made a pro-regulation argument while arguing against government. You cannot claim that unregulated markets magically and efficiently organise economy towards it's most efficient state.

The same situation applies to child labour. The exact same situation arised with health and safety. The exact same situation arises with our markets selling precision weapons to bloody dictators that use our weapons against us.

So we have 4 spesific cases of markets delivering rettible outcome and not a single counterexample from you for marktes delivering optimal outcome.

Abolishment of serfdom as a general practice in a England didn’t require government intervention it was actually outcompeted as strange as it sounds. By the time the law changed relatively few people where directly impacted.

This is part of a long term global trend which relates to the overhead of slavery and then serfdom. Serfdom outcompeted slavery in Europe because it was simply more efficient, and Serfdom in turn failed for the same reason.

Child labor was more an outgrowth of the industrial revolution which initially reduced the need for complex skills or physical strength. Kids going back thousands of years would help with harvesting etc, but it was also common practice to pay tradesmen to take on apprentices because child labor was effectively worth nothing when averaged across a year.

It was only when jobs got ultra specialized that child labor became valued. Though eventually flipped back where collage students are talking unpaid internships because Google etc has no use for their services. Obviously collage students can do some forms productive labor, but ignoring the law what can 10 year olds do? Acting and here it’s surprise surprise perfectly legal in western countries for 10 year olds to actually work. Suggesting it’s more a question of economics than morality.