I'm still new at writing RIs, so please give me any constructive feedback and suggestions you may have. This response isn't link heavy, so if you see any places I could add citations, let me know and I'll add them.

Original comment.

My RI is in-line responses:

The basic answer is 'no'. If you consider the argument for an unregulated market, it basically comes down to libertarian principles of personal choice. But if you look at the libertarian principles, they have, and need, as their foundation the 'harm principle' and 'non aggression principle'. That is, for the unregulated markets to work, people have to actively work at making certain that their actions do no harm to other people, and never act aggressively against other people. And, to be blunt about it, humans will not live that way.

This isn't economic, but it's still incredibly dishonest and incorrect. First, it's a tactical move to bring up a political movement that has a very charged and powerful response from the reader. The original post was about unregulated free markets, and while they may commonly show up in right-libertarianism, it's hardly the only political position to support them. And the Harm Principle and the Non-Aggression Principle aren't ideas that assume that actors will "never act aggressively against other people." In fact, even using the links Cutlass sourced, we see that there are several sentences about the fact that these principles have consequences against aggressors, not mere hopeful thinking. Cutlass may disagree with their effectiveness, implantation, or even intent, but this paragraph as it's written clearly says that the ideas themselves have no way to check aggressive behavior.

In economics the term externalities means any affect the actions of some people have on other people who were not a knowing and willing participant in those actions. The problem here is that externalities are pretty close to universal in things that people do. So unwilling, unknowing, 3rd parties are very commonly affected. Now in some cases these externalities are beneficial. This is called positive externalities.

Sure sure. Moving on. Cutlass is building up to something.

But one thing which is commonly true with positive externalities is the markets provide as little of them as possible, because the people paying are giving a free benefit to others, and they try not to do that.

Private companies collaborate peacefully every single day. They may not give "free benefit" to their competitors, but there's no reason to claim that there is no cooperation among private entities.

So positive externalities are commonly associated with public goods. They are things that the market will provide, but never provide as much of as is best for society. And so the public provides them. Negative externalities are 3rd party effects which are harmful to the 3rd party. That is, someone who is not a party to a transaction, may not even be aware of the transaction, is harmed by it. These are extremely common in market transactions, and even in just every day life.

Public goods are "never provide as much of as is best for society" by private actors? By what standard? What about food? What about consumer electronics? It's hard to disentangle the various government's boons and curses to the market, but they are, generally, primarily provided by private entities to a degree of over-saturation of both markets.

Cutlass then dives into negative externalities and sets the blame solely at the feet of a--presumably deregulated--"market." Which is a perfectly acceptable premise to an argument. How is Cutlass going to really blast the evil "unregulated" market?

I once took the train from here to NYC.

Oh, okay. I'd say it's safe to say that train is publicly funded, not privately. I'm going to double check, though. There are two train stations in NYC and all four entities that operate trains through there are public organizations.

Along the sides of the tracks much of the way was a lot of trash. Even though it is illegal to dump trash on the rail right of way, people, many people, did it.

Negative externalities are present in public land with public goods, even when there are laws governing littering and vandalism. This works against Cutlass who doesn't seem to realize it. It's a mild example of tragedy of the commons, not a market failure.

But whenever people do, they harm other people.

Who? What? How? Cutlass was safely in the train. Was scrap metal left on the tracks? I agree littering is wrong and an eyesore, but what harm did it do him or her? What does this have to do with deregulated markets?

Last year the city of Toledo lost its water supply. Why? Because up river 1000s of farmers fertilized their fields. And so down river excessive fertilizer runoff created large areas of undrinkable water.

It "lost its water supply" for a whopping three days. And those farmers who used excessive fertilizer were already acting in accord with local, state, and federal regulations on farming. This is a negative externality perhaps but it's definitely another tragedy of the commons, and using it in an assault on free market policies is bizarre.

People just casually acting in their own interest take actions which harm others. Now if just a couple people do these things in an uninhabited area, that doesn't matter. But when many people do it in a heavily inhabited area, many people are harmed.

This could be a point, but it's entirely unsupported by anything Cutlass said.

The unregulated market has no response to these problems. It has no remedy. There's nothing that can be done. And this is why it cannot work.

The stunning "just because" argument.

You may say it's ineffectual, you may say it's non-optimal, but to say that once a market has become deregulated, there are literally zero possible ways of fixing problems is, like the rest of the comment, entirely off-base and incorrect.

There are arguments against deregulated markets, but this couldn't be more off-base, from start to finish. I'd normally not even bother posting this here, but the user is both a subscriber and the bloviating about externalities was too much not to share.