It stops being free when government attacks economic activity, not when it promotes it.
In this regard, the Chinese government pouring large subsidies into solar panel production both spurred the economic activity around installing solar panels, and attacked / thwarted in around production of the panels themselves, if the production happens outside China. Only the US was able to somehow develop solar panel production.
Thats competition. It is a feature of markets.
not a bug.
No buyer has power to set prices and no seller does either.
A lot of private companies effectively operate above the law too! In theory the law can be enforced on them. In practice it often isn't.
Governments have lots of other incentives (like job creation, elections, income distribution)
A government has a monopoly on violence. A government has a monopoly on money printing and taxation. A government has a monopoly on the legislation. A government has far more human and financial resources than any other economic actor within its borders.
If a company goes out of business, people lose their jobs. If a government goes out of business, people lose their lives.
It is not a difference in degree, it is a difference in kind. There is a reason that economist distinguish between private firms and government.
Yes, they do favor their own companies and provide subsidies etc. that’s not the problem though, the problem is that they’re undercutting other companies by selling below cost thanks to those subsidies. Otherwise, we would have to call our farming subsidies the same.
I was originally trying to point out that it has always been important to keep your vital industries secure, it was very stupid of Intel and others to transfer so much technology abroad (to anyone) just to increase their margins, I think ASML did the best: You can purchase our machine, but that’s pretty much it.
Sounds like a nirvana fallacy. Yes, nowhere has a perfectly free market, just as nowhere has a perfectly corruptionless justice system and railroad tracks are never perfectly parallel. But there are definitely markets that are less free than others and actions that distort markets further, and it's right to call those out.
The whole point is that when in some market there is some nation trying to disturb the free market mechanism in its favor, other countries can't just be naïve and stand by doing nothing. They have to counter act and this is what happend in The Netherlands.
The US used its massive state surveillance apparel to spy on essentially every country in the world, not only for diplomatic advantage, which you might argue would be fair game, but also to steal industrial secrets and promote US companies (see e.g. https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/290615/revealed-m... for France, one of their supposed allies).
Paraphrasing you:
> The US heavily subsidize their companies and have large government bureaus that strategically guide industries over long time frames. For example, the US has been on a long, intentional path to destroying all international corn producers via subsidies, dumping, etc.
The US essentially destroyed the traditional crop growing in Mexico by a combination of subsidies and free trade agreements.
It is _true_ that China does not play a fair free trade game. It is _not true_ that the US, or any other country, does. (The reasons for it should be obvious btw, free trade only works if legislation is more or less the same everywhere, otherwise it's just stupid.)
You should see what Microsoft did. Forgetting the corruption the open document format, free/subsidised licences for students is almost the same thing.
Let's rather choose a set of principles and apply them without exception?
This is not how free markets function.