The parent comment never implied that every medical interaction is an emergency. I can see why they mention it, as emergencies are usually the most expensive medical transactions by far.
Capitalism cannot exist without regulation. There is no such thing as a "free market". Capitalism relies upon regulation to enforce the enclosures it builds. Regulations are a direct product to protect profits.
For example, Medicare is prohibited from negotiating prices with drug companies for most medications. A few exceptions were carved out with the IRA passed under Biden. The VA can it pays a lot less. Why is Medicare forbidden from negotiating? Because the pharma industry lobbied for it.
Also, cheaper generics are banned from being imported even though you can buy the exact same thing for a 95%+ discount in Canada.
To see this regulation in action, you can pretty accurately predict what courts and the government will do by simply asking "what do the capital owners want?".
Just this weekend, we had an actual domestic terrorist in Minnesota kill a state lawmaker (and her husband) and attempt to kill at least one other. So far he's been charged with second-degree murder and some federal charges [1].
Now compare this to Luigi, the alleged shooter of UHC CEO Brian Thompson where the AG and US attorney immediately came out calling for the death penalty and laying first-degree murder and terrorism charges on him.
Now maybe the federal or state charges will be upgraded to first-degree but there's none of the same rhetoric about an actual terrorist. Ask yourself why.
"Capitalism cannot exist without regulation. There is no such thing as a "free market". Capitalism relies upon regulation to enforce the enclosures it builds. Regulations are a direct product to protect profits." - Source?
Imagine a society with no laws, no regulations and no courts. How would you enforce a contract? How would you resolve a dispute other than "might is right"?
Even beyond this, we have a thriving commercial aviation industry. How would that work without safety standards? How would consumers have confidence in the planes? What about pilot qualification? Managing airspace? Having confidence in the parts you need, the people you need to maintain the planes and things like the fuel that goes into the plane without regulation?
Occasionally anarchists or libertarians and argue you can Yelp review your way to a functioning market. "Pilot could not fly plane but was nice to us. 2 stars"
The idea of "deregulation" is fundamentally silly and entirely devised to increase profits by getting rid of pesky safety regulation while maintaining regulations that protect profits and restrict competition. Imagine what deregulation would do to Vertizon or AT&T. Do you really think deregulation will remove restrictions on municipal broadband? Or instead just remove requirements to build out their networks to less profitable areas?
Libertarianism and deregulation are just fundamentally ridiculous ideas. Ergo, you need regulation for a market to function.
Hint it has - the standard of living is far higher now; medical care is far better; and the number of people subsidized by those working has greatly increased (this may not be considered a benefit, but it's where the extra income is going).
Throughout history there are very few monopolies and they don't normally last that long; that is unless they get are granted special privileges by the government.
Concentration is the default in an unregulated environment. Sure pure monopolies with 100% market control are rare but concentration is rampant. A handful of companies dominating tech, airlines, banks, media.
Concentration seems much more prevalent in heavily regulated markets e.g. utilities / airlines. In many cases regulators have even encouraged this e.g.finance.
There is no default for unregulated markets. It's a question of whether the economies of scale outweigh the added costs from the complexity that scale requires. It costs close to 100x as much to build 100 houses, run 100 restaurants, or operate 100 trucks as it does to do 1. That's why these industries are not very concentrated. Whereas it costs nowhere close to 100x for a software or financial services company to serve 100x thee customers, so software and finance are very concentrated.
The effect of regulation is typically to increase concentration because the cost of compliance actually tends to scale very well. So businesses that grow face an decreasing regulatory compliance cost as a percent of revenue.
You are comparing Apples and Oranges. You just can't compare the barrier of entry for Software business and an Airline, even without any regulations. It's just orders of magnitude more expensive to buy an airplane than a laptop, and most utilities are natural monopolies so they behave fundamentally different.
I can't and I didn't. I never said anything about barriers to entry. I'm talking about concentration here and why the market is dominated by airlines with hundreds of planes instead of airlines with 10 planes. Barriers to entry are inevitable in capital intensive industries.
Home building is interesting because I think a major blocker to monopoly-forming is the vastly heterogenous and complicated regulatory landscape, with building codes varying wildly from place to place. So you get a bunch of locally-specialized builders.
Regulation can increase concentration in a high corruption/cronyism environment
— regulatory capture and regulatory moats. There is plenty of that happening.
In building, I think we have local-concentration, due to both regulatory heterogeneity and then local cronyism - Bob has decades of connections to the city and gets permits easily, whereas Bob’s competitor Steve is stuck in a loop of rejection due to a never ending list of pesky reasons.
Concentration is not monopoly, and furthermore your comment does not begin to address the critical part of parent’s comment : “does not last very long”
Inequality at a point in time , and over time , is not nearly as bad if the winners keep rotating
> unless they get are granted special privileges by the government
That's what all the lobbyists are for.
None of the people or organisations that advocate for "free markets" or competition actually want free markets and competition. It's a smoke screen so they can keep buying politicians to get their special privileges.
They always inevitably end up being given special privileges.
Because, contrary to what we would all like to believe, once a company becomes large we don't want them to go under, even if they're not optimal.
There's a huge amount of jobs, institutional knowledge, processes, capital, etc in these big monopolies. Like if Boeing just went under today, how long would it take for another company to re-figure out how to make airplanes? I mean, take a look at NASA. We went to the moon, but can we do it again? It would be very difficult. Because so many engineers retired and IP was allowed to just... rot.
It's a balancing act. Obviously we want to keep the market as free as possible and yadda yadda invisible hand. But we also have national security to consider, and practicality.
Why? to increase productivity and improve the human condition. If AI can do research then technological and scientific progress will increase dramatically.
In a world where human labor is no longer necessary, why do you think the people who control the AI models will care about “improving the condition” of anyone but themselves?
Human labor hasn't been necessary for a large portion of people. We have more than enough people to make food and collect water for us to survive. We can always make up jobs for people to do.
For who though? The research scientist can no longer do the work they trained for. Apply this to the entire economy at some point, and you have a serious problem.
Very aware of that. That to me seemed like a targeted attack by a tracked APT group. What I’m referring to above is that the more vanilla attacks (ex: popular online mattress store gets popped) actually have national security implications, despite seeming like just an inconvenience
> Even minutiae should have a place in our collection, for things of a seemingly trifling nature, when enjoined with others of a more serious cast, may lead to valuable conclusion.
