I find the idea, that anything in a modern economy could be unregulated, to be simply incoherent. Property is acquired and transferred according to law. Contracts are governed by contract law. Whenever someone goes to court, they are appealing to one of the 3 branches of government. Enforcing these decisions involves another branch of the government.

I think that has to do with culture and historical experience. On the European continent, people emphasize the break that came with the French Revolution. British people talk about the Magna Carta and pretend that civil rights are something, that somehow always existed.

US Americans also focus on discontinuities in some things; the American Revolution, Civil War, and maybe even the civil rights movement. But always the English Common Law remained an unquestioned background. It’s perhaps understandable if one forgets that the Common Law is law, and the judicial system is government.

If you look at the German experiences, it becomes impossible to ignore that everything can be different. The end of the Holy Roman Empire after the French Revolution, the Wars of Liberation, the codification of german civil law, the Unification, the birth and end of the Weimar Republic, Nazi Terror, the two German states, capitalist and socialist.

The only constant is that society continues on. It never collapses, no matter what the strain. People are not naturally selfish. When push comes to shove, they do their duty, which is not, as such, a good thing.

So, it’s no surprise that Germany came up with Ordoliberalism. It emphasizes the role of government as creating the framework in which businesses exist. The government directly creates some markets and heavily influences others (eg illegal drug markets). Mind that there are a many specific policies associated with this ideology, that don’t result from this insight.

Of course, views that see government and its laws as the foundation of markets/markets as a tool wielded for the public benefit are hardly alien to the USA. It’s implicit in the copyright clause of the US Constitution.

I’m now all out of steam. I remind you that law-makers do not have the option of marking all AI generated content.