Both Sides: The Free Market

"This Both Sides installment presents two viewpoints on free market systems. First, Richard Wolff posits that, from a historic standpoint, the free market has never actually existed because regulations are always necessary due to naturally introduced, undesirable affects. On the other side, Milton Friedman puts forward that free voluntary exchange, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, leads to a market that averts a concentration of power and prevents people from doing harm" (Stossel in the Classroom, Feb. 2022).

Here are some comments. 

1. The examples Wolff presents to show that regulation follows whenever a market appears are not compelling.
1. Labor contracts existed for 100s of years before governments passed minimum wage legislation.
2. Public utility regulation creates the very monopolies he condemns.
3. He conflates people willing to pay the most for an ice cream cone with people with the most money. Not all "rich" people are willing to pay a lot for a cone and some "poor" people are. Do not confuse what I just wrote with this next statement: the market system allocates more goods and services to rich people than to poor people.
4. He ignores that positive effects of the increase in the price of ice cream cones.
1. The quantity supplied increases. (He misuses the terms "demand" and "supply".
2. Profits earned by the producers encourages entry of alternative products, especially of products that cater to consumers being priced out of the market.
3. The favor that the market shows to the rich encourages production activities and investment in physical and human assets. That the market system allocates more goods and services to rich people than to poor people may be a feature, not a flaw.
2. Friedman states at the beginning of his talk that no actual system conforms completely to free enterprise.
3. Friedman spends most of his time talking about how the market system is but one example of order arising spontaneously when individuals cooperate freely and without coercion. .