I'm not sarcastic, why would I? I really don't understand how you can be for free market fundamentalism and for regulation of asbestos at the same time.
From watching the US from the outside and from several visits, it looks like a huge amount of people in the US are free market fundamentalists. People did label me socialist for suggesting market regulation.
You're right. I haven't thought that one through.
Consumers could band together and pay labs for lists of products, or subscribe to a labeling service.
Or if there is a market, companies will label their products for a segment.
(If it isn't clear, I'm no free market fundementalist)
People in favor of the most free market possible will always blame individuals for making bad choices. You're in a bad health, because you're overweight? It's your fault.
But I don't believe in that. I believe it's structures fault. I believe that there are already people who are more powerful than others, because they're shareholders, they already have money or their parents do, they own physical properties such as lands or houses, etc. And those people in power, if you make the market even more free, they will just increase the power they have over others. Some other will randomly (because they're lucky) also aquire wealth sometimes, and become more powerful, but it's highly unlikely according to many scientific studies.
And I didn't even talk about other kind of things that can lead to more inequalities, such as the skin color, your gender, whether you're trans or not, etc. It has been shown (in the US) that even well born black people are disavantaged at school compared to white people. So being rich alone isn't enough. You just have to check the top 10 of richest people in the world, and see how similar they are: cis, white, men.
So that's where I believe they're wrong: the "free market" isn't free (or as they say meritocratic) if you don't first do a big reset, and make everyone equal first. Which can't happen realistically.
> From watching the US from the outside and from several visits, it looks like a huge amount of people in the US are free market fundamentalists. People did label me socialist for suggesting market regulation.
Honestly there’s a very loud vocal minority here on things like this. Most people in the US are not free market fundamentalists.
There are still things sold in the US that are harmful for you. Look at cigarettes. Smoking in the US is at an all-time low; part of that is e-cigarettes, but a large part is the constant education and reminders here that it’s bad for you. If it were up to the free market, as it used to be, cigarette manufacturers would not label their products at all. That’s what they used to do, and far more people smoked back then—sans forced education and labeling.
Fair rules and impartial referees are anathema to the plantation class. They prefer incumbency protection enforced by the government at the expense of everyone else.
Regulation is a scary word for rules.
Socialism is a scary word for collective action.
"Free markets" is doublespeak for might makes right; with the "freedom" to act without consequences.
Hey. I'm sorry for bothering you in this thread. I found your old comment about your business processes built around literate programming and I can't reply there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35988792
Is this approach documented anywhere? Honestly, this would be a cool blog post. I'd love to know more. I use org-mode for literate programming, but jupiter would do as well I guess.
So, my question is more about the business side of it.
From watching the US from the outside and from several visits, it looks like a huge amount of people in the US are free market fundamentalists. People did label me socialist for suggesting market regulation.
You're right. I haven't thought that one through.
Consumers could band together and pay labs for lists of products, or subscribe to a labeling service.
Or if there is a market, companies will label their products for a segment.
(If it isn't clear, I'm no free market fundementalist)