alt Hacker NewsBut in real life, any time you have "a free market", by the definition of "no or minimal regulations", you will inevitably end up with a very un-free market, by the definition of "lots of choice for the consumer, healthy competition".
And far, far too many self-proclaimed libertarians think that any regulations that "encumber" the market take it farther away from being "free", when in fact, there are regulations that help and regulations that harm, and you have to be able to actually understand them and use human judgement, rather than thinking One Simple Rule can be applied in every situation without fail to achieve perfection.
Exactly. My point sort of the converse: that the upthread comment reflected a set of values that, while grounded in "cyberlibertarian" thought, do not reflect actual market value as measured by an actual market. The libertarians tend to think simultaneously that "The Right to Pursue my Niche Ideas" and "The Supremacy of the Market" are related concepts, and they emphatically aren't.
And in particular that the former tends to be the first thing stomped on by runaway market forces.