this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
1058 points (97.9% liked)

Technology

83963 readers
4414 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 347 points 3 days ago (12 children)

Very good. My TL;DR take:

The American and German approach of letting incumbents build monopolies, allowing wasteful overbuild, and refusing to regulate natural monopolies is often called a ‘free market.’

But it’s not free. And it’s not a market.

True capitalism requires competition. But infrastructure is a natural monopoly. If you treat it like a regular consumer product, you don’t get competition. You get waste, or you get a monopoly.

The Swiss model understands this. They built the infrastructure once, as a shared, neutral asset, and then let the market compete on the services that run over it.

That’s not anti-capitalist. It’s actually better capitalism. It directs competition to where it adds value, not to where it destroys it.

The free market doesn’t mean letting powerful incumbents do whatever they want. It means creating the conditions where genuine competition can thrive.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 139 points 3 days ago (6 children)

Some right libertarians actually believe the bullshit that free markets magically pop up out of the ground like weeds if you just don't regulate anything. This is obviously untrue. You need the right type of regulation to have a free market. Otherwise you end up with cartels and monopolies.

Those that operate the cartels and monopolies know this, but continue to feed the propaganda machine that spouts the opposite.

[–] aldhissla@piefed.world 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not that I am one, but I believe true libertarians should be rabidly pro anti-trust legislation, letting corporations fail, and a 100% inheritance tax above a threshold.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

True libertarians are. Companies shouldn't get tax payer bailouts.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)