toomsie wrote:kwackers wrote:And who makes sure these cars are safe? Who makes sure they all have standard features rather than arbitrary indicators or lights?
The idea that we'll all be better off because you as a consumer has a choice (albeit a limited choice) is frankly nonsense - why do you think we created the monopolies and mergers commission in 1949?
Good question. Safety and standardization can both be handled in the free market. Safety regulation do not have to be handled by government the free market does a good job without it the need for central control.
In a free market, there can be independent safety inspectors. If you are willing to buy a safe car, you can buy one that has been inspected by one of those companies. A safety inspection company, has an incentive to do a good job , or lose out to a competing safety inspection company. If a car ends up being dangerous that has been certified good, the CEO, owners can be sued by the shareholders and victims. You can even bet that competing safety inspection companies are willing to point out flows in another company inspection for obvious reasons. Who do you think checks that the government’s safety inspection is good, its a law until itself.
Car insurance companies do a good job to incentivize folk to be safe. In most cases they will not insure dangerous vehicles or people who are too much of a liability. I guess this also can include cars with non standard lights.
Standardization has already worked in the free market. HTTP(Hyper Text Terminal Protocol) is not a standard that is enforced by law. But in order for your web servers to communicate with others it needs to communicate in HTTP, your free to use any protocol you choose or build yourself however.
Monopolies in a free market can only happen if the CUSTOMER is happy with the product or service relative to the competition. If everyone buys iphone and not other phones such as Android, it only means customers are happy to buy an iphone.
There was a company who was a monopoly in aluminium production. They used to overcharge for their aluminium. But companies that use aluminium started to find cheaper substitutes. Coca-Cola, started to use glass bottle instead of aluminium. As a result the market forced the aluminium company to reduce its prices to a more acceptable amount.
A government is a monopoly. So how can it create an act that prevent a monopoly, which it is. A monopoly in force. Forces you to pay for products that you do not want or need.