The 19th century in the US is probably the largest data set when it comes to extremely low regulation markets. Hong Kong is a more recent example. The point being, there is a lot of actual real world data on each side of the fence.

Well, it depends on what you consider regulation. If you take a broader view, like Benjamin Tucker did, you'll see they were in fact very regulated.

Well let me give you the simplest market argument I know. Look at corrulation between economic freedom and economic size and growth.

http://www.freetheworld.com/2013/EFW2013-complete.pdf (Page 22)

I'm not sure why have you decided to reply with that; if anything, by referring to Benjamin Tucker, I'm taking a position in the defense of free markets, not attacking them.

And in any case, if my position was opposed to yours, that argument wouldn't convince me anyway, since I find "economic size" and particularly "growth" to be little more than fetishes of mainstream ideologues. I'm much more easily convinced by what the economists call "consumer surplus", though I'd rather know the "worker surplus".

I was adressing everybody in the discussion.

Like I said, its just the thing that I start with, just this statistic would not convince me either.

> The point is that we can't take a market with N regulations, see what happens with (N-1) regulations being followed, and then say "see, that's what would happen without any regulations!"

That seems like the sort of evidence that's actually useful when making policy decisions about whether we should increase or decrease regulation. Abolishing all regulations is not practical, so what political theorists think would happen in a complete absence of regulation is irrelevant to any real-world issues.

It's only relevant when making policy decisions about that particular rule. Regulations aren't commodities, and the fact that eliminating a certain regulation would destabilize the system is no evidence that removing any other regulation would do the same.

But in any case, if you think what would happen by abolishing all regulation is irrelevant to the real world, then you should be replying to RivieraKid, who was the one drawing such irrelevant (and, in my opinion, unsupported) conclusions.