This is the biggest problem: we have legislators making laws they don’t even read or understand. The parties and the lobbyists run the political machine on both sides and there is no way to check them at this point in time.

You state: “but a “free market” only works when there is no external (political) power involved”.

This is true. I agree whole-heartedly. And this doesn’t occur. However, even if the market tends towards an “un-free” state, the citizens still have the option to go in another direction if there is enough competition and choices available. The problem with regulation is, that instead of trusting businessmen to be honest and forthcoming and not seeking their own self-interest (which we know doesn’t always happen), we expect those who make the regulations (with all the corporate and other special interest lobby influence) to be honest, forthcoming, and not interested in increasing their own power and influence (which we know hardly ever happens).

As much as the liberal economic types want us to believe it, they aren’t free from bias and inculcate their own form of economics into the regulation.

If people are left to make choices in a market where the only regulation is transparency, then the ability of corporate and class-warfare special interests to influence the market disappears and freedom and prosperity prevail. We live in a world in which information travels so quickly that any company that isn’t keeping its nose clean will be out of business within days of violating fundamental principles of decency that society agrees on.

Re: health care–all I can say is that would guess that waste because of regulation and litigation double or triple health care costs. If the regulation and litigation costs were removed, we could easily afford health care for all Americans.

I heard somewhere that nearl 40% of malpractice suits are against less than 5% of doctors. So regulation is targeted at that 5%. But how do we preempt the 5% if regulations are not in place? Getting bad medical care is not non-cooperative suffering, it’s just being victimized.

I agree that transparency is essential to a free market. In fact COMPLETE transparency (and complete information) would create a truly anti-abusive free market. The problem is that we don’t have these things, and we won’t get them just by asking the market participants to play nice.

The monied right-wing has done a spectacular job at tying “the free market” to “capitalism,” thereby convincing the masses that because we have a capitalistic system, we have a free market. This is not true. The kind of capitalism we have is exploitive, secretive, and anti-free market because it engenders UNFAIR regulation, galvanizing the power of the powerful and denying access to the weak. But if we go against the free market or capitalism, we fall into the other economic semantic trap set by the right wing—that capitalism is the opposite of communism/socialism, and suddenly we’re anti-American.

What I’m saying is the market needs some regulation to keep it accessible and non-abusive. It should have as little regulation as possible to do the job, but a “free market” only works when there is no external (political) power involved. We know this is not, and may never be, the case.

1) Slavery is a violation of the free market. Is it part of a “market”? Absolutely, but it is contrary to the “free” part of the free market. To use the existence of slavery as an argument against the free market is to set up a straw man.

2) You are right that medical care is very difficult to provide in a free market because most of the time there is little “choice” involved in the pursuance of health care that is present in the rest of our economic decisions. From my perspective (the anatomy-savvy brother) the amount of regulation and control that is exerted on the system and providers increases the cost and limits efficiency. We could save tons of money if physicians were allowed to practice medicine in the manner that was free from external controls and mandates.

3) Your last statement that oversight and regulation will fix the evilness in the market is hopeful, but I don’t know that it bears out. Transparency is the only oversight and regulation that will assist in preventing the abuses. Other regulations will just allow for different abuses. Although businessmen are money hungry, those who impose regulations are power and control hungry to the same degree and it just transfers the potential for abuse to a different set of individuals.