Comment by lotsofpulp
Comment by lotsofpulp 15 hours ago
I am not seeing the discrepancy:
> A free market does not directly require the existence of competition; however, it does require a framework that freely allows new market entrants. Hence, competition in a free market is a consequence of the conditions of a free market, including that market participants not be obstructed from following their profit motive.
The barriers to entry being referred to in the Wikipedia article are presumably government related. No government is stopping Intel or Samsung or any of the other chip makers from selling what TSMC sells, hence the “framework that freely allows new market entrants” is there.
And the subsequent paragraph seems to be exactly what is happening in the market of high end chips:
> Hence, competition in a free market is a consequence of the conditions of a free market, including that market participants not be obstructed from following their profit motive.
You don't see a discrepancy between your claim that free markets have nothing to do with high barriers to entry and your own link claiming free markets require free entrance to the market?
And no, it is not specifically referring to government related barriers, although those certainly count. Government is very often the thing that generates barriers to entry, but it is by no means the only barrier to entry. Any barrier to entry is, from a strict theoretical sense, a departure from a pure free market, although that's more in the "spherical cow" sense of the idea.