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0 pointsAjedi322mo ago0 comments

I think it's actually not that hard to get right (or at least "right enough"), as evidenced by the fact that markets have successfully run the entire global economy for thousands of years with no central oversight and almost no regulation.

Markets failures do happen, and when they do it can be helpful to have an external force step in to nudge the market back onto the rails. But even without such interventions they work remarkably well on balance.

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Joker_vD2mo ago

> markets have successfully run the entire global economy for thousands of years

Markets, as they are understood today, are more like about 300 years old, even less in some places. The bulk of world economy has been sustenance farming for most of the human history, with some communal mutual help (based on favours and mutual indebtedness) thrown in.

> with no central oversight and almost no regulation

Lol what? E.g. Roman Republic (and later empire) tightly regulated its markets, especially food trade, during all of its existence.

Ajedi32OP2mo ago

The industrial revolution multiplied the size of the global economy by several orders of magnitude, but it didn't create it. International trade has been happening on a smaller scale since large-scale civilized society existed. And I said "almost no regulation", not "no regulation". Probably something on the order of 99% of the regulations we have today wouldn't have even been feasible to enforce a couple hundred years ago, yet markets still functioned just fine on the whole.

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