You're falling into the liberatarian trap of assuming a level of agency on the part of average people that lines up with your own. Turns out that most normal folks do not feel empowered or capable in any way of starting their own company, or we'd see a hell of a lot more of it. Regulatory capture, tax and accounting, the need to drum up sales and do marketing - these are all things that prevent normal folks from bothering at all, because the juice doesn't feel worth the squeeze.
You can't just do things. You need permission from all kinds of folks to do anything anymore. We've strung ourselves up on that for good reasons - to prevent environmental catastrophes, labour exploitation, etc - but it does also serve to make the "free market" sort of an anachronism. Free for whom? Not for you and me, and honestly I don't want to go back to buckets of white paint being sold as milk, so I'm okay with a little less freedom there.
You're falling into the liberatarian trap of assuming a level of agency on the part of average people that lines up with your own. Turns out that most normal folks do not feel empowered or capable in any way of starting their own company, or we'd see a hell of a lot more of it. Regulatory capture, tax and accounting, the need to drum up sales and do marketing - these are all things that prevent normal folks from bothering at all, because the juice doesn't feel worth the squeeze.
You can't just do things. You need permission from all kinds of folks to do anything anymore. We've strung ourselves up on that for good reasons - to prevent environmental catastrophes, labour exploitation, etc - but it does also serve to make the "free market" sort of an anachronism. Free for whom? Not for you and me, and honestly I don't want to go back to buckets of white paint being sold as milk, so I'm okay with a little less freedom there.