I'm not sure that providing subsidies to large banks and refusing to enforce the law when they commit crimes is a laissez-faire approach to corporate regulation.

Enforcing a law? You mean a law regulating business?

gasp

Someone fetch the smelling salts, I think I may faint!

This is the discourse equivalent of going to a party, pulling your pants down in the living room and taking a shit on the floor.

What is laissez-faire about the major industries (banking, defense, oil, agriculture and many more) being the biggest lobbyists? They pay politicians to write laws favorable to them. Their PR industry tells you its laissez-faire, but think through what you say.

Take it a step further: if there weren't any government intervention, then they wouldn't have to pay any lobbyists. The companies wouldn't even need any laws enacted. They would - as the phrase implies - do whatever they wanted. The lobbying is the process by which they are able to enact their will, despite, in theory, being a regulatory mechanism.

If anything it's member's only laissez-faire, where only those with enough money to buy lobbying influence are given carte blanche.

> "if there weren't any government intervention, then they wouldn't have to pay any lobbyists."

That thought experiment doesn't help though, since at the level of abstractions we are talking on, just having courts to enforce normal contract law can be construed as "intervention" of a kind. Wolves of various kinds typically decry shepherds for not allowing them the liberty to eat of the flock. The whole point of this civilization thing is to pull us a bit above/out of the state of nature. So "no government intervention" isn't a viable setting for a civilization.

I guess I didn't do a good job of expression my thought. I completely agree on your point, and I wasn't try to endorse or espouse a lack of government.

I suppose I could have stated it better by saying that the regulation that's in place is merely a puppet for the lobbyist, providing the facade of regulation, when it's 'laissez-faire' since those paying the lobbyists are allowed to do what they wish.

It's impossible to tell the spirit in which this comment was intended.

Apologies. Have edited for tone.

It turned out like I hoped you meant it.

What happens when there are substantial barriers to entry _and_ there is collusion; how would "laissez-faire" economics deal with it, in timeliness which would make it tenable for actual people.

I'm actually curious to know.

Well, the French Revolution solved the problem in a bit over three years. Perhaps that's a model worth investigating?

Who's freedom are you maximizing? The freedom of those who put their money in the bank or those who manage that money?

Sure. On the other hand, in the long run we are all dead.