Fair enough - that’s not what I meant. I believe there may be such problems, but I don’t believe this is one of them, so merely mentioning their existence is insufficient to add to the argument.
These problems always exist. "Free market that corrects itself" is nothing but a thought experiment. Additionally, the whole idea of such a market directly comes from an era when one person or a small group of people could potentially compete with anyone and everyone else, that is, from before industrial revolution.
And here's why:
- the main problem is that in a free market the only measure of success is profit. It has nothing to do with "whoever has a better product will win". A "better product" doesn't necessarily mean "better profits" or even "any profit at all".
- free market assumes that everyone will be free to compete, free "from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities". This fallacy assumes that humans don't exist. That they won't create monopolies, give money and capital to the people they want to (thus creating economic privileges) and deny goods to whoever they want (thus creating scarcities).
- free market assumes that all markets are created equal, and that all markets are driven by supply and demand. This is not so. We don't have infinite resources. We don't have infinite demand for those resources. Many markets are inelastic. Many markets are not even markets at all. Cancer patients are not a market, for example. And if they are treated as such, you end up with people dying, because the drugs are costly, their supply is (or will be artificially) constrained, and the demand for them is high.
- free market assumes that any new product or innovation can be made instantly or nearly instantly available by whoever came up with this product and they will be free to compete. And that it's equally easy to come up with a competing product anything that exists. This not only ignores fundamental rules of physics, biology, chemistry etc. It also ignores the complexities of modern life. "Oh, it's simple to solve the problem of a monopoly: all we have to do, as a community of thousands of developers, is to find billions of dollars and create a competing product in the next 10 years. Easy". And while we're at it, we can also go ahead and quickly create an alternative chemical reaction to produce vitamin C because China has a monopoly on it. And so on.
- free market assumes that all knowledge there is is instantly available to everyone and everyone can just build on that knowledge. Even though companies routinely create and protect trade secrets. And if you want to try and create something similar, you have to spend an insane amount of time and resources retracing the same steps and reverse-engineering stuff. Can anyone recreate Apple's A-series chips? No, not anyone. Maybe one or two companies in the world at the cost of billions of dollars and 10 or so years. And they would have to go through many of the same steps that Apple has gone through. And while they are doing that, Apple will have had 10 more years to improve stuff. And a lot of that work depends on other trade secrets like CPU manufacture that another monopoly/duopoly will or will not be willing to provide to you. And a lot of that stuff is undoubtedly relying on a lot of knowledge that's in the public domain precisely because of copyright laws.
And finally: the reason so many government regulations exist is because free market failed to find solutions that don't result in life being a misery:
- food and drug safety? Free market had no qualms of selling contaminated drugs for children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_(horse) and so no need in testing food and drugs
- labor laws? Free market has had no qualms of working people to death for 15 hours a day with no days off and saw no problems with that
- free (as no pay) education? Free market had no qualms with only the rich getting proper education (what happened to "free from all forms of economic privilege" huh?)
- public services such as police and fire departments? Free market had no qualms about letting private fire brigades fight each other and protect only those who had enough money to pay.
- and the list just goes on and on and on. Minimum wage, polluting rivers (Cuyahoga River), exploding cars (Ford Pinto), health (tobacco), ... Until governments intervened, free market was more than happy with the "solutions" it came up with.
Because the duopoly you see is the direct consequence of such a free market. There were no regulations saying there must only be two, there have been dozens of competitors free to do whatever they please, and this is the situation we've arrived at.
Moreover, the whole premise of the free market is "survival of the fittest". Well, Apple and Google are the fittest, and they survived.
> You say ‘we’ve arrived here’ as if technology and culture have stopped evolving and all new work is being done within these two companies.
> This simply isn’t so. Apple and Google (especially) are both showing signs of ossification.
One: I never said this. Two: this has nothing to do with "free market will solve things"
> There is no reason an alternative, either from the community as a whole, or from a competitor could not be built over the next 10 years.
Once again: you bemoan that free market should be able to solve the problem of the duopoly. It has already solved it: by creating the duopoly. A free market will always tend towards monopolisation for the simple reason: the best way to stay alive is by destroying and/or buying the competition. The many regulations (from antitrust law to basic things like food and safety regulations) have arisen precisely because free market never arrives at good solutions.
And even if a competitor arises, it will, once again, be a competitor with nearly unlimited power and money creating a yet another, you guessed it, duopoly or monopoly.
> There is no reason an alternative, either from the community as a whole
"Community as a whole" does not "build an alternative". "Community as a whole" is a nation/country. So now you want government intervention for some reason.
> If that seems like too long to wait, consider that it’s less time than it took for the current situation to arise.
The current situation took about 10 years to arise. And Apple and Google are quite deeply entrenched now. So now you're taking a number out of the blue, and pretend it's a given. Try this for size: "there's no reason an alternative could not be built in the next 50 years". Just as out of the blue. Doesn't sound too good now, does it?
“Community as a whole” is anyone who is interested in a different software environment, e.g. open source, corporations who don’t like the duopoly, consumers who pick something that feels better.
If it’s in so many people’s interests to develop an alternative, then there are billions of dollars, and thousands of developers available to do it.
No reason at all it has to be another company with nearly unlimited power.
Those who believe the problem cannot be solved will not be the ones to solve it.
> If it’s in so many people’s interests to develop an alternative, then there are billions of dollars, and thousands of developers available to do it.
Where are those billions of dollars suddenly materialise from?
> No reason at all it has to be another company with nearly unlimited power.
What do you think billions of dollars are?
> Those who believe the problem cannot be solved will not be the ones to solve it.
Riiight. So this problem will be solved by a magical community of thousands of people working in unison and spending billions of dollars that materialise out of thin air. Got you. As we've seen this happen with Firefox phones. And Pine phones. And Librem phones. And Meizu. And PuzzlePhone. And Shiftphone. And...
Your resort to sarcasm suggests that your argument isn’t holding up.
Nobody is talking about money materializing out of thin air. All but two companies would stand to benefit from an alternative to the duopoly. Between them they certainly have many billions of dollars invest in an alternative.
Linux solved the problem of proprietary operating systems, and the Linux we see today was in fact built by a magical community of thousands of people working in unison and spending billions of dollars.
However the billions of dollars didn’t materialize out of thin air. They came from corporations and investors who saw that they could benefit from a free platform that wasn’t under the control of one or two companies.
What makes you thing there is a problem that the free and open market won’t correct?