But that’s not how it works. Free market ideas don’t expect a perfect world, they instead expect an imperfect one. You don’t need everyone to make food decisions, you just need enough people to make good decisions so the market caters to them.
It’s the same idea as democracy, you don’t need every voter to make a good choice, you just need a plurality. As long as enough people make decent choices enough of the time, democracy works. The free market is just democracy, but with money instead of votes.
In both cases government has a role. I think governments should add in longer term costs to the market, but in a way that preserves choice as much as possible (i.e. carbon taxes instead of carbon limits). I think governments should educate the population to increase the chances that they’ll make good decisions at the polls.
In the specific case of Microsoft, things were competitive until the government looked the other way WRT antitrust law. There’s a lot of shady stuff that happened in the first couple decades that Microsoft existed, yet they largely got a free pass.
All the big corps get a free pass because of money and power, and this is why free market doesn’t work.
Democracy doesn’t work either since media is owned by big corps as well. People can only know what they are allowed to know. If you are rich and powerful, you manipulate the media and you manipulate entire elections and decisions.
But that’s not how it works. Free market ideas don’t expect a perfect world, they instead expect an imperfect one. You don’t need everyone to make food decisions, you just need enough people to make good decisions so the market caters to them.
It’s the same idea as democracy, you don’t need every voter to make a good choice, you just need a plurality. As long as enough people make decent choices enough of the time, democracy works. The free market is just democracy, but with money instead of votes.
In both cases government has a role. I think governments should add in longer term costs to the market, but in a way that preserves choice as much as possible (i.e. carbon taxes instead of carbon limits). I think governments should educate the population to increase the chances that they’ll make good decisions at the polls.
In the specific case of Microsoft, things were competitive until the government looked the other way WRT antitrust law. There’s a lot of shady stuff that happened in the first couple decades that Microsoft existed, yet they largely got a free pass.
All the big corps get a free pass because of money and power, and this is why free market doesn’t work.
Democracy doesn’t work either since media is owned by big corps as well. People can only know what they are allowed to know. If you are rich and powerful, you manipulate the media and you manipulate entire elections and decisions.