You Should Know

Public healthcare also removes one of the few leashes they have on workers to keep them in line. My Father in law used to work at a local retail chain in my area, and the pay was straight dogshit, but the health insurance was phenomenal. It kept many workers from leaving for better paying jobs.

I think thats just a subset of the whole "Government should be run like a business" mindset.

A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations.

We've had numerous laws precisely because companies couldn't play fair, and made things worse for all involved. The government didn't pass laws against company towns, scrip, and predatory pricing because they decided to ban things for fun.

I'll go extra-spicy and point out that there's no such thing as "ownership" as we know it without government. Legal-wonkishly, ownership is enforceable, transferrable, exclusive title to property. I can "own" land that I'm only physically present on for a few days per year because my name is on a piece of paper in a file cabinet in a government office, and it's backed up by a court system and police force that's constituted and willing to enforce my title.

I just mention it because a lot of the deregulation whiners are the same people as the "taxation is theft" whiners.

A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations.

And the truth is that the oligarchs, the established players in the game of capitalism, do not want a free market. They want a market with the illusion of freedom. A free market like the one you describe is, in fact, a true free market. Because then they have to actually compete with new players. Players who don't come from the same backgrounds as the established players. Who may have different beliefs, who might not have the same skin color. Who may have a superior product or service to one or more of the established players. Who are free to sit at the same tables as oligarchs and take up space because their government gives them the power to do so. De regulation gives the illusion of a market being free, by making it so that if you want to be a new player in the game, you can, but unless you pay obeisance to the top players, you're not getting very far. Plus the top players will buy you out, which is essentially them bribing you to walk away from the table.

That second paragraph is a pretty concise explanation on why ancaps and their ideas are stupid.

Saw dust was also added to flour. Various heavy metals would be added to food to enhance their color.

Also, and this is a spicy one but backed by basic economics, regulations are a required element to capitalism

Indeed the free market itself has demanded regulations, hence why they exist. And the regulations don't actually per se stop crime, they simply give a quick mechanistic action afterwards to getting retribution when the regulations are violated - they bankrupt corrupt businesses over time.

is plaster bread low calorie

They will market safe food as a new product and charge you more for food that wont kill you.

Now it'll be 10x worse. Just don't eat here and don't buy food from USA. I say this as an American. We are fucked.

To continue with the argument of "the market will self-regulate and people wouldn't buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again"

Turns out the parent company owns every other brand of that product, so going to another brand is meaningless

wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again

Assuming there is perfect information in the market. In reality there is heavy information asymmetry.

It also assumes free competition while we have every market dominated by a few players buying up everyone else, often with cartel like behavior.

Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean. Also it assumes healthy competition and companies that are competing to make the best product at the chrapest price. It ALSO assumes brand lotalty isn't a thing, and consumers are judging things purely objectively.

Like, i understand the idea, but in practice there are a ton of caveats.

The absolute surplus afforded to us by modern farming and then the waste of so much of it will never cease to piss me off and will likely piss me off more in the future when we lose it to climate change.

There have absolutely been deaths due to unsafe, mass produced foods.

The Free Market (holy be thy name) gives you the choice between $1/bottle for milk with chalk and bleach, or $10/bottle for one with less chalk and bleach. If you want one without chalk and bleach, you'll need to find your own cow.

Also, the cows all have birth defects and need uranium-powered antibiotics to stay alive.

Now, let us open our song books to number 34: "Praise Hayek and His Perfect Mustache".