Time and time again large competing forces in the market are found to have colluded instead of directly competing with each other to drive price/cost down. What is it that still makes you believe that two (or n-number) of providers won't collude to charge an astronomical amount for a life-saving treatment?

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bko 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Because if something sucks, someone comes up with something better and sells it for a profit. This is the history of pretty much every other good or service that is not heavily influenced by regulation and artificial barriers to entry

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ryandrake 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Because if something sucks, someone comes up with something better and sells it for a profit.

This is basically a religious belief at this point. It's how a perfectly ideal free market might work, but we don't have any of these, especially in healthcare.

	▲	bko 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Do you not use private businesses or something? Do you not shop at a private grocer or order things from Amazon or use a private search engine? Probably 99% of what I consume comes from private companies and the services generally get better over time, with some exceptions. Compare that to an experience with the TSA.

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ThrowMeAway1618 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

	▲	nickpp 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No need for blind belief, you can always visit Venezuela, North Korea or Cuba to see how a country without free markets fares. Or come here in Eastern Europe where we had the "pleasure" of trying both systems and see how free markets pulled us out of utter poverty.

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nickpp 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Time and time again large competing forces in the market are found to have colluded instead of directly competing with each other to drive price/cost down.

Collusion and cartels never work on the long run. It's an unstable equilibrium, the incentive to reduce prices to capture more market is too great.

> What is it that still makes you believe

Competition. It's the only force keeping humans honest. That's why we must treat any barriers of entry in a market with extreme care. The only "failed" or "captured" market is a strongly regulated one.

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jgeada 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Markets can remain irrational, or colluding, far longer than you can stay solvent (or even alive).

For example, while the Phoebus cartel only really lasted from 1925 through to 1939, 1000hr incandescent light bulbs remain the standard offering till present day. Profitable market manipulations are sticky.

The whole notion that markets are efficient is just a mathematical construct that has become very dogmatic for people. But if you look into the details, markets are efficient under the assumptions of perfect information and infinite time. Neither of those conditions are present in the real world: we neither have perfect information nor infinite time.

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jittles 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Competition. It's the only force keeping humans honest.

Pure misanthropic fantasy pretending to be sophisticated economics.

	▲	nickpp 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> misanthropic fantasy It's the obvious reality around me here in Eastern Europe. We were starving under communism before 1990 but are now enjoying the amazing wealth capitalism brought.

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lenkite 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Collusion and cartels never work on the long run.

Define "long run" - they have been already proven to have worked for years and in some cases even decades.