As a student of psychology (both human and other) and economics over the past few decades; I would like to make a few points about market economics that seem to get lost in all the shouting. Free and fair markets require two (at least) things to make a level playing field: Transactional Transparency in which both parties to a transaction have all the facts needed to understand what they are buying or selling. And no Externalities where benefits accrue to at least one party in a transaction, but any bad effects are suffered by third parties. Here are a few recent examples where there was lack of Transactional Transparency and/or there were Externalities: A mining company leases public land and pays royalties way below fair market, then dumps the tailings where the rainwater leaches poisons into the local streams and contaminates drinking water for everybody else downstream. A company collects and aggregates information on millions of people and then sells it to other companies without bothering to check if the purchasers are legitimate. Why should they? They do not suffer any consequences if the purchasers use the information to commit identity fraud on thousands of people. Employees at large financial institutions took pools of very high risk mortgage debt that was often generated by fraudulent mortgage originators, then bundled them into securities that were given AAA ratings by bribing an "independent" third party, and finally sold them to other financial institutions and individuals. The employees, and their supervisors all the way up to the CEO, "earned" multimillion dollar bonuses, but suffered no personal losses when the debt went south. All the parties at each step in the transaction until the final public sale knew or had access to information to know that something was rotten in Denmark, but did not want to screw up the bonus pool. Medical insurance companies sell policies to small companies and individuals and collect premiums until the person has a serious illness. Then the company tries to find any way to deny benefits because even if they know that they will eventually lose. After all there is a good chance the person will either die before they have to pay, or the policy will come up for renewal so the person can be dropped and therefore they limit their losses. Even if they eventually have to start paying, their risks from the additional medical therapies required are limited to the policy maximum limits. They get to ration health care in ways that the government could never get away with. They get to practice medicine without a license and step between a doctor and his patent by deciding what therapy is appropriate. They do not suffer any consequences from their bad acts because lawsuits against them are limited. Laws and economic regulations are not created out of thin air. They are set in place to level the playing field. Do they all work as intended forever? - No. But don't make blanket statements about "big government" or "too much regulation" unless you can show me how removing regulations would improve transparency and remove negative externalities. I have not heard many people on Medicare trying to get rid of it. Maybe because they are old enough to remember what conditions were like for their grandparents before it was passed. Does it need work? Yes, but no one seems to want to get rid of something that was called "socialized medicine" by its opponents before it became law. Every far right objection to even the wildest far left healthcare proposal today was also used with the same arguments against Medicare and I do not know any doctors who do not take Medicare patients because the government is interfering in their practice, or patients who say the government is rationing their healthcare.
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