[dealforager]

The solution is real free markets. Constant government intervention in the housing market, the stock market, education, healthcare, and everything else under the sun has led us to where we are today. It always feels nice for a bit when the government bails you out, but the long term consequences are always much more severe. Prices are information and when all the information is polluted, it becomes very difficult to have a functioning economy. It's the same thing that happens in social media, trolls and bots pollute the information so it's impossible for most people to tell the truth apart from fiction. Unfortunately the regulatory capture is so deep and the problems have gotten so bad that I don't know how this can be solved without an extreme event.

[wolverine876]

Why would free markets help homeless people? Is there any basis for this, other than claiming that one's favorite solution is the best? Free markets serve those who pay the most, which is good for allocating iPhones, but not for healthcare, basic housing, basic food, education, safety, etc., which should not depend on ability to pay.

> It's the same thing that happens in social media, trolls and bots pollute the information so it's impossible for most people to tell the truth apart from fiction.

Isn't that 'real free market', unregulated?

[tgflynn]

> Free markets serve those who pay the most

As someone who has spent years in a low income situation due to health issues that hasn't been my experience. At least up until the pandemic food as well as many manufactured products, which are relatively unregulated, were quite affordable even for the lowest incomes. There's a large enough market of low income people so that companies like Walmart, dollar stores and even Amazon can make money serving that market.

Housing and medical care, on the other hand, are completely unaffordable for a significant fraction of the population without government assistance.

[holbrad]

Generally for most goods markets work really well. There's two intrinsic failure cases: externalities and monopolies.

So arguably housing fits into the monopoly bucket, especially if you lean towards a land value tax.

Safety and a monopoly on force most would argue are the domains of government.

But the rest of your examples seem fine to be market based, though the devil is in the detail.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> The solution is real free markets.

A ludicrous suggestion.

The "free market" optimizes for one single thing: Profit.

Providing housing for homeless people is not profitable, and so a free market would never do it.

> Constant government intervention in the housing market, the stock market, education, healthcare, and everything else under the sun has led us to where we are today.

Health care is in the same boat. If a poor person gets cancer, the free market would gladly let them die. They wouldn't be able to pay for treatment.

Education is similar. If the government didn't provide schools, a considerable portion of children would go uneducated.

[holbrad]

Optimising for profit can lead to both massive positive and negative effects.

So the obvious question is how you balance those negative effects against the positive. This is where regulations and governments have to step in, though that certain has it's own massive issues.

Health care has a lot of unsolved problems, from my perspective no group is actually doing well (Just varying shades of bad, I'm from the UK). There are so many ailments that can't currently be treated well (Despite having spent decades studying them, though that seems to be a systematic failure of academia)