this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Trade secrets don't need to be enforced much by law. You can create an ad hoc trade secret regime by simply keeping your secret between a few key employees. As it happens, there are some laws that go beyond that to help companies keep the secret, but that only extends something that could happen naturally.
To get closer to the free market there would have to be a duty to disclose any- and everything that's now a trade secret, no matter how easily kept. To not just get closer but actually get there we all would need to be telepathic. As said, perfect information is a bitch of a concept.
I'm not arguing for any policies, just explaining what would be necessary to make the theoretical model of the free market a reality in actual reality: It assumes perfect information and perfectly rational actors, it's a tall order.
Adam Smith's. He pioneered rational choice models in general. Came up with the whole shebang that 20yold econ 101 students love to ignore in favour of "free market is if I get a fat payout".
Adam Smith came up with it. It's also how actual economists use it. Don't confuse that with how business majors, politicians, and generally peddlers of institutionalised market failure use it.
In the hardcore contemporary literature you mostly see more precise language such as perfect competition, (theoretical) situations which are pareto-optimal, which is built on Adam's rational choice models. The maths became more solid, the idea didn't change. They didn't have game theory back then.
And FFS read The Wealth of Nations and see what he thought of monopolists he'd consider our billionaires to be no different than the kings of old. The father of capitalism was out for universal wealth and happiness, not personal enrichment.
I said the exact opposite the whole thread. Are you confusing me with a capitalist or something.
It's all you fucking asked about.