Comment by array_key

Right, but regulations are necessary. And ideological opposition to regulation, as a concept, in inherently wrong and always will be.

Some regulations are good, some are bad. In order to have a free market, you MUST have some regulations. It's not optional.

The reason is simple and intuitive - if you don't regulate the free market, it will just make itself un-free, which is what we're seeing with Apple. You need to actively push back against that.

The reason is all free market players, no exceptions, have the utmost fundamental incentive to make the market non-free. Everyone, all the time, is devising new and innovative ways to make the market they control non-free. Because this is how you maximize revenue.

Thank you for your response :)

I would push back a bit on the ideological comment, just to say that ideological acceptance of regulation is also probably wrong. This is different from a philosophical opposition/acceptance of political authority, although it often appears the same.

I think it's fairly obvious that the base prerequisites for market economies are property rights and some form of legal system to handle disputes. I don't consider that to be "regulation", especially not government regulation, but if that is what you mean by the term then of course I would concede that markets require it. However since even the most fervent proponents of laissez-faire economies accept the necessary role of property rights and a legal system, I would consider those to be separate from what we commonly refer to as regulation.

Ok to respond to your main point: It seems reasonable to me that in a competitive market there is an incentive to win, and companies can win by preventing others from being able to compete. This is commonly done via regulation, for example the big companies are lobbying for regulation on AI to help cement their position at the top. The thing is, just because companies are incentivized to win doesn't mean that it's possible to sustain a monopoly position for a significant amount of time. Unlike other competitive activities there isn't a time clock with winners declared at the end. Economists have shown that absent of external cofounders, a position where a company can charge monopoly prices is unsustainable.

There is of course a stronger position to be made for regulating so called natural monopolies, but even then there isn't much evidence that they really exist. Some of the most cited examples, like telecom providers, end up not being true - look at Eastern Europe and what happened when they deregulated that industry for example.

Comment by array_key_first