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RE: Could'a Should'a Would'a looked back with 20/20 at the WHAT IFs...
You make the point that too much state influence made the prices for education and health care rise.
But isn't the reality a different one? Lobbyism and profiteering was it that rised the prices.
In "communistic" Germany it is easy possible to have health care for everyone with prices comparable to US - but we include everyone with lower additional pay. No bankruptcy because of cancer.
Same for university: Fees, if existent, are low. And average quality is not much different to US. Quite some people say it's better. Of course in the last years numbers of students have risen while money was slashed. That did not help.
No lobbying only gets them to PASS the laws in the first place. Once the guarantees are in place that removes competition from FREE MARKET and then it is just a feeding frenzy to see who can get at the guaranteed PAY OUT.
Isn't that market in purest form? There is a price to get and the best one gets it.
Nope. Government involvement makes it no longer a market in it's purest form. Government + Market = path to cronyism.
Market - Government = Monopolism
Incorrect, though a common mistake.
Monopolies can only exist for very long for two reasons:
If the company and the product are so good that no one bothers to look for ways to compete with them, or offer a similar service. This type of monopoly people don't tend to pay attention to or have a problem with. Nothing to complain about = not much opportunity to compete. They are not super common, but they have existed.
Government backed. A government is required to keep a long term monopoly. Via laws they can make things easier for some, and more difficult for others. Those who make the RULES control the game. That's what governments do. They force rules upon the people. They can pass something to block potential competitors. They can pass laws to ease the way for specific locations. These types of monopolies are ALL over the United States. This is very common with power and utility companies. They are given territories and other companies are RESTRICTED from operating in them. We'll hear someone bitch about their electric company and say they are going to go find another one and we'll just laugh at their ignorance. Depending upon where you are at you only have ONE power company and that restriction is in place by government mandate and there ARE companies that would gladly compete with them, but are restricted from doing so. It also stops the regional power companies from poaching on the territories of other regional power companies. This is but one example of monopolies that could not exist without the government.
You would be hard pressed at finding a monopoly that is not of type #1 that does not manage to stay in power as a monopoly without the assistance of the government. I haven't been able to find any.
Now you can if you focus on a short period of time... as there is actually a 3rd type of monopoly...
I do want to add that I do believe part of why this is a common mistake is that when it gets REALLY bad and the public super mad it is usually the Government that rushes in and gets to act the hero, and the public is unaware that the only reason it existed for as long as it did and got to be the way it was in the first place was with government backing.
A Free Market would leave windows of opportunity to compete. Whether it is treating employees better, paying a better wage, offering better service, offering a higher quality product, better marketing, etc.
There are plenty of historical monopolies but any of them I've dug into there is a spectre of the government involved in their history that made their creation possible and even aided.
If you can find specific examples where this is not the case I'd like to know so I can go research them as I haven't been able to find any.
Read the first few paragraphs of the article again. You are illustrating my point.