The rhetoric of ‘free markets’ is misleading.
I certainly agree with this last point, as does anybody who (like me) has spent some time as an economic regulator (the UK Competition Commission in my case). Modern economies are highly regulated, and that goes for the Anglo-Saxons as much as anyone else.
The Enlightened Economist
Free’ marketsDiane Coyle | freelance economist and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission and is acting Chairman of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation
If markets become purely free then eventually someone will corner the market and create a monopoly. To ensure that markets remains as free as possible then the market needs to be regulated, but the market is huge and regulation and its policing will have significant costs.
ReplyDelete"Tax is theft", say the libertarians but their beloved free market will fall apart without regulation, but who's going to pay for this regulation without tax?