What do you think about free market Economics. I would like to know professional opinion!?

Question

Please, answer if you are Economist. Thank you!

Answer 1

The answer depends on how free you mean by "free market".  (While not an economist, I have an econ degree and work in financial markets.)  If by free market you just mean "a combination of supply and demand set prices", that's one thing.  But a truly free market with no government intervention into the economy is something different.

A truly free market economy cannot exist now.  The world is simply too complex, and as such it is too easy to dupe consumers.  (To quote right from Wikipedia, "By definition, in a free market environment buyers and sellers do not coerce or mislead each other nor are they coerced by a third party.)  In the real world, sellers are constantly trying to coerce or mislead buyers, and modern day complexities have led to market conditions where it's often impossible to discern when it's happening.  Throw in the complexities of a global marketplace, and a truly free market becomes a myth.

That said, the US is a reasonably free economy, in a practical sense.  The government puts in some basic protections, ranging from the UCC to the Federal Reserve, that keep it from being labeled a truly free market economy.  But the basics of the system are reasonably laissez-faire, and supply and demand are the main drivers of prices.

And the results basically speak for themselves.  By almost any objective measure, the US economy has been the most successful in the world over the past century... from a purely economic standard.  That ignores any social inequities generated by the free market, but it only ignores them because the free market in most cases creates consumers who are sensitive only to price.  This can have some ugly side effects.

So, what do I think about it free market economics?  You can do a lot worse, and it's got a pretty good track record.  But the realities of the modern world are such that a truly free market may not be the best thing for consumers.