Rent seeking is enabled by government involvement in markets. The idea that it was the point of "Neoliberal economics" is simply wrong.
Twaddle. Bad government can increase it, but government is also the only force with the capacity to oppose it. In other news, medicine can kill you.
Adam Smith noted rent-seeking in the 18th century. We have had plenty of laissez-faire government during that time. It did not eliminate rent-seeking.
It did not eliminate rent-seeking because rent-seeking is not created by the application of this or that economic policy; it's because animals seek easy meat.
Over time, that trumps any system based on codified rule of law. It is, by Gödel, impossible to write law that decides the legality of all behaviour. Sufficiently smart sociopaths will get around any codified system. Ideology founders on biology.
That does not mean we should give them free reign. The solution to am arms race is not to place your head on the block - not when your enemy is a sociopath.
Free market fundamentalism, like all dogma, is espoused by exactly two sets of people: grifters, and cretins. Ideology - be it free market fundamentalism or communism or any other holy book that claims to solve 7 billion humans doing human things - is nothing more than the expression of a hunger for simple solutions to complex problems. There is no fault in _liking_ simple solutions, but _needing_ them is an intellectual disability.
This is when you can tell someone has a really strong argument. Anyone who disagrees with you is, by definition, scum.
A true Scotsman would never support free markets fundamentalism.
You're taking a strawman of the parent post. Their point was about people espousing dogma. You turned that into 'anyone who disagrees with me'. Not cool
I could have guessed your beliefs... but i didn't. I used "laissez faire" because that encapsulates what you wrote, and no more.
I did put all of laissez-faire in a sack and beat it like vermin. It's not a intellectual position, it's a grift. I gave you the condensed argument already.
I apologise to HN at large for letting my temper get the better of me, which is a disservice to the ethos. I'm working on it.
I do not apologise to you, strictnein. I recognise three sins: littering, cruelty to the defenceless, and wilful ignorance.