Unregulated Markets?

There is no such thing as an unregulated market

Entrepreneurs restrict each other through competition, and consumers restrict entrepreneurs by patronizing competitors. And restriction of human activity is all that regulation means.

If valued and demanded, third-party arbitration services, also in competition with one another, will serve other regulatory needs.

Therefore, democracy’s perpetual “crisis in commerce” is completely unfounded. The problem isn’t self-regulated merchant rule, but overregulation of their markets by statist means.

Businesses can’t operate without conforming to laws that are already on the books: criminal law, property law, contract law, commercial law, and the law of tort.

All the federal government needs to do is reduce its bureaucracy and stay out of people’s business.

But, instead, we are inundated with endless rules and regulations.

There is no reason someone needs to address or conform to a government “Licensing and Standards Committee.” 

There are no state-produced “regulatory mechanisms” and “licensing fees” in a free society.

This is not the Soviet Union. Canada is not, traditionally, a country that relies on politicians attempting to solve any and every perceived or real conflict that arises.

Canada is not, traditionally, a country that requires entrepreneurs to register with the government for a business license.

If people are living in cities, where they are surrounded by strangers all the time, then they’ve already demonstrated that peace is a prerequisite.

There are commercial means of regulating human activity, and they don’t involve using the apparatus of compulsion and coercion as a preventive arbitrator of the first resort.

If state force maintained order, increased laws and regulation would fix everything.  

Larger police presences would turn slums and city jungles into prosperous metropolises.

More bureaucratic paperwork would protect consumers and property.

But that’s not how freedom and prosperity works.

Creating more laws and expanding bureaucracy stifles the taxpayer, hinders the entrepreneur and does little-to-nothing to actually address the root of the problem.

An actual solution would be to allow private neighbourhood associations and private communities to regulate commerce and security within their borders, instead of delegating that power to politicians.

Unable to calculate rationally, these 19th-century fiefdoms fail at virtually everything they put their mind to.

Therefore, people often don’t see a reflection of their values with the so-called public services they depend on.

There are no “unregulated markets,” only an unfettered growth of government bureaucracy.

Buyers and sellers can get along without state interference. The sky won’t fall if career bureaucrats cease to interfere with human action.