There's no reason to hijack a fairly specific discussion with a much broader ideological rant. This sort of thing has been happening on HN lately and it bothers me. It takes a potentially interesting conversation and turns it into an ideology measuring contest.
I understand that the theory of free markets in general might be applicable here, but the point is the way the GP is framing the debate it can't be resolved without much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
What application market is it that is open and always wins?
The same hold true for application markets. In any market where money are involved and parties with interests of their own can get a stronghold on the rules, the results are the same.
>I didn't know Google was using their market to bail people out and wage a secret resource war.
Well, pushing their own apps to users with "picks" and front-page promotion is akin to a bailout. They can restrict apps that compete with their core businesses in a snap, they can change the rules of the game anytime, etc. They use it to do whatever offers them a competitive advantage.
Apple's marketplace is an even better example, as it is more closed. Google cannot close the Android marketplace at the same level, because they cannot do all the stuff Apple pulls and still attract developers away from more lucrative iOS at the same time (developers are the "scarce resource" here).
Btw: "ideological rant" implies that something I said re: "free markets" does not hold true and I say it because of my ideology. Can you point to it? Else it's not "ideological", it's mere empirical observation.
I can. You didn't say (as in "state") anything. You asked a rapid fire succession of rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are one of the best indicators of ideology (as in "zealotry").
The free market left to itself would fix most of it's own problems (I say most because I think some regulation is necessary and good). But it requires patience to let the market work.
The free market left to itself will eventually converge into a monopoly.
No, all the things that I mention are instances of actual markets. Were is this free market? If it's possible, why it hasn't been seen anywhere on earth?
>The free market left to itself would fix most of it's own problems
I mean, to reason about what the free market will do IF it exists has no value.
The free market, even if it was imposed by some power for one second, would have to be forcibly sustained by human agents --namely corporations, consumers, workers and the government. Nothing tells us that it would, in fact history teaches us otherwise.
One might as well say: "If everybody always was pro peace and love, and never did anything bad, we would have world peace and love".
Of course, but the whole point is in how to achieve that. So, to say "the free market would fix most of it's own problems" has zero value, if the #1 problem is how to create and sustain a free market itself.
I've never seen an open market in the wild, much less it "always winning".
You mean an open market like the "$1 trillion bailout not to collapse the whole economy" open market? Or an open market like "we enforce strict copyright laws to artificially limit each copyrighted product to one maker and it's pricing at his whims"? Or an open market with patents, for the same purpose? Or an open market with frequent cartels, to everything from dairy products to RAM? Last, but not least, an open market where a country with a military advantage has several army units deployed and several wars to secure resources and keep their prices down?