Free Markets make a free and fair society. Regulations make for a move to larger corporations, more less competition, and corporatism or mechanism and eventually oligarchy as the power of the state is used to enrich the elites.
you have to Smash the state to Eat the rich...
> 100% incorrect, Most of the western world has been moving AWAY from free markets
Capitalism does not equal free markets.
Unless a god-emperor intervenes to prevent (natural) monopolies and unfair competition free markets are bound to degenerate at least a bit.
Citation needed. The robber Barrons of the 19th century and companies like Standard Oil needed no help from regulators to become oppressive monopolies and rent seekers. No corporation wants to operate in a truly competitive market and will use any means available to become a monopoly and exert pricing power. Sometimes that means buying up all your competition or driving them out of business by "dumping" products on the market below cost for a while. Other times it means subverting regulators to erect barriers to competition.
At least with regulatory capture you have some ability to influence the politicians involved. What influence does a single consumer have on a Standard Oil style monopoly?
yes, yes they in fact did. Far from being an era of laissez-faire, the late 19th century was dominated by a class of rich parasites, just like the modern economy. The freed market, without all these distortions and giveaways, is truly an equalizing force. [1]
A truly free market without subsidized security, regulation, and arbitration imposes costs on large scale aggregations of assets that quickly deplete them… It may be that libertarianism, taken to its logical conclusion, is far more egalitarian and redistributionist than we ever dreamed – not as a function of any central State, but rather due to its lack. [2]
Even in the 19th century the corporation was a legal entity chartered by the State. Corporations benefit from an arsenal of privileges, such as personhood and limited liability, which serve to set the rules of the market on terms favorable to corporate investors and managers. Obviously, limited liability is a fiat subsidy to corporate investors The imbalance of responsibility this enables cannot be underestimated, for it goes to the very heart of corporate economic behavior. [2]
[1] https://c4ss.org/content/30085 [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20100330222751/anarchywithoutbom...
Do you honestly think that without government saying that corporations can't do violence that they would all get along in happy lovey dovey fairy tale land? No, they would absolutely have their own standing armies. We need regulation to even have markets otherwise we go back to feudalism
I would even go as far as expanding the Lockean proviso to its natural conclusion in the establishment of a Single Tax system around natural resources / property i.e Geolibertianism
In short I believe government should be about 1/10 or even 1/20th of the size we have today. Total government expenditure in the US (State Local and Federal) should be no more than 15-18% of GDP, today federal alone is over 25 approaching 30%