How free should the market be is an interesting question because I don't think I can easily answer it, as free as possible is the best answer I can honestly come up with and it's not one I like because it doesn't answer the question really haha

I don't believe in government oversight whatsoever, I think that the government has caused most of the problems in our society, whether directly or indirectly.

So in my opinion a "perfect" (and likely unobtainable) world have no government oversight over corporations, but would also only have small companies (with maybe 10, max 20 employees) that act at the local level and the customers actually hold them accountable to what they do at a societal level.

There would be no law dictating open sourcing code, not a mandate requiring companies to respect users privacy or be ethical, nor a law dictating that a company is not allowed to change the terms of the sale afterwards, or anything of the sort, rather, companies that did that would be shamed by their customers and would have direct financial losses.

However, acknowledging current market realities, some degree of governmental oversight may serve as a necessary transitional mechanism until we develop a more mature consumer culture - one where customers actively demand corporate responsibility and support businesses that align with their values and operate at a human scale.

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And this is the peak of the matter.

So based on what you said above, how do you prevent what you described earlier as ‘crony capitalism’ if you strip away the gov and leave the owners and controllers of financialised capital to run riot, using their capital to essentially destroy the market for their financial benefit and their ‘shareholders’? Isn’t what you described exactly what leads to crony capitalism?

I don't know; I think it might just be one of the things that we, as people living in this fallen world, have to be contempt with and there is no true solution. but at the same time, I think that right now the pendulum has swung too much towards the statist side, and I think that the closer we are to the freedom-loving side, the better off we are.

At the end of the day, what I think is that we all are in a way responsible for everything; we are responsible for not keeping corporations in check, and we are responsible for not rebelling against the government when they get too much power.

We are responsible for bowing down to the silver spoon and for thinking their powers are real and now we are too deep into it to change it

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Sounds extremely dogmatic and even religious to me while not having any ‘divine guidance’ whatsoever 😂.

We can’t just hand wave a very real and visceral issue with what you proposed? We can see at every level, from as big as the corporation to as small as two guys in the market, that we need rules to guarantee rights are not taken, abused or neglected, but libertarian views seem to just “hope” that it all ‘works’, all while giving every advantage to those who have wealth and power? We’ve seen throughout western history that those with money use that money to control and subjugate those who need that wealth to survive and buy their daily bread. Government is the only force that could counter ‘men with wealth and power’

I believe we need government to enforce rules that lead to a more fair market.

Didn't mean to make it sound religious. All I was trying to get at is that I don't know what the best way is, I just know that where we are now is not it. As for the government being the only thing that can keep companies at bay, I disagree.

The government is just another monopoly, one that we have given supreme power to. I honestly think that the average person, like you and I, need to do our part by holding companies accountable and by competing with them on their playing field.

I agree, we all need to do our part. But we have to acknowledge that we don’t have the ability or power to stop a multi-national company dumping chemical waste in my local river (for example) or for companies to under pay their staff if unemployment is high. There would need to be someone, not bought by capital, to step in and say “actually no, that’s not right, stop it”.

By the way, I’m not advocating for just “government” because western nations have demonstrated that they are morally bankrupt and incapable of acting morally and in the interests of the ppl. But I am saying that some sort of authority is necessary. An authority grounding in something that’s not morally bankrupt