I still think that you are being overly literal for an argument (“There is no such thing as a free market”) that doesn’t actually get you anywhere.
It does. Whenever you criticize capitalism or the free market, you invariably get a bunch of “free market enthusiasts” arguing that the problem is too much regulation and too little free market. Any time the “free market” produces brutally exploitative living conditions and colluding oligopolies, the claim is always the same: “This is corporatism, not capitalism. Government interference in the market did this. We should make the market freer.” This is the idea behind the comment I was originally replying to, and my argument is a response to it. Since a free market is the capitalism equivalent of a unicorn, “this isn’t a true free market” type arguments are basically all No True Scotsman fallacies. I’m shutting down a common counterargument to criticism of capitalism.
If free markets don’t exist, then personal freedom doesn’t exist for the exact same reasons.
Yeah true; both “true” free markets and “complete” (only constrained by the Harm Rule) personal freedom are models with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the situation. Thinking of a situation as described by a free market is like ignoring air resistance; it’s not a useless abstraction, but ultimately it’s still an abstraction and should be treated as such.
It does. Whenever you criticize capitalism or the free market, you invariably get a bunch of “free market enthusiasts” arguing that the problem is too much regulation and too little free market. Any time the “free market” produces brutally exploitative living conditions and colluding oligopolies, the claim is always the same: “This is corporatism, not capitalism. Government interference in the market did this. We should make the market freer.” This is the idea behind the comment I was originally replying to, and my argument is a response to it. Since a free market is the capitalism equivalent of a unicorn, “this isn’t a true free market” type arguments are basically all No True Scotsman fallacies. I’m shutting down a common counterargument to criticism of capitalism.
Yeah true; both “true” free markets and “complete” (only constrained by the Harm Rule) personal freedom are models with varying degrees of accuracy depending on the situation. Thinking of a situation as described by a free market is like ignoring air resistance; it’s not a useless abstraction, but ultimately it’s still an abstraction and should be treated as such.