The rule of law is a necessary ingredient for me to argue against the existence of a free market, I am certainly not arguing against it.
N (I hope you don't mind me calling you N because I can never spell your handle. Plus, I'm lazy.)
You appear to not have addressed the issue of what to do with the guy destroying your house. You are differentiating between tangible real property and intangible intellectual property. You are saying that it is okay for the government to protect your tangible property as a condition for a free market but when it protects your intangible property, that is a violation of free markets. Why the difference? If a condition of a free market is to take your music and do whatever one pleases with it, why not your house? Am I not reading this correctly? If so, how?
Let me try to make it even easier.
Condition A: The supply in the market is not controlled by the government or investors.
Condition B: The market is a free market.
Condition C: Our laws limit the supply in the market.
Then the logic is this:
If B then A. C, therefore not A and consequently not B.
The argument is a valid one. The only way that this argument could be construed as arguing against our laws is if there was an immovable truth: Condition D. The free market is the ideal, over and above any other human endeavor. I think condition D is absurd.
Now condition C is somewhat complicated. But basically this is what I am arguing:
1) Intellectual property laws limit the number of suppliers in order to ensure fairness for investors.
2) In a market, where entry is prohibited a Nash equilibrium will be reached after sufficient cycles and the market price will be the profit optimal one (not the intersection of supply and demand).
3) By definition, the profit optimal price is obtainable only by controlling the supply.
4) From 2 and 3, a market where entry is prohibited is a market where the supply is controlled.
5) 1 and 4 imply that the laws produce a market where the supply is controlled by investors.
In words, my conclusion is this: free markets don't exist because supply is always controlled by investors. Now, which letter or number do you have a problem with?
Arthur Laffer would be proud!
You assume a priori that all supply is controlled by investors. That is simply not the case. Think about the market for lettuce. You can dig up your property and plant all the lettuce you wish. Then, you can sell it to whomever wishes to buy. There is no patent. There is no intellectual property. There is merely a good to be bought and sold.
A "computer" is not patented. Certainly, there is intellectual property within your computer, but you can start a company at any time assembling and selling computers. If you have a revolutionary concept, as Michael Dell did, then you can sell all the computers you wish. No patent. No intellectual property. No control of supply.
This is your original statement.
There are no free markets in Canada.
It is simply incorrect that there are
no free markets in Canada. Take a look around your house. Perhaps you have something you would like to sell that I would find of interest. If you sell it to me over the Internet, that is a free exchange. That is a free market. There is no government control. There is no investor control.
On your point about patents, though your point about game theory is interesting, and is valid in some cases, it does not apply to
all markets. It does for some markets but it does not for all. The patented product, as I stated in my original point, can be one of many choices for consumers.
Thus, to say that there are
no free markets in Canada is false.
In reality, economies are a mixture of free and controlled markets.
