I mean, it depends how you define a "free market" doesn't it? A market filled with monopolies and price fixing schemes is not "free" in my personal experience with it. None of the assumptions about Capitalism (the good assumptions, about supply and demand, new competition being able to enter and undercut, innovation being a way to gain a piece of the pie, etc), can be said to faithfully apply to a market that isn't at least minimally regulated to get rid of price fixing and monopolies and cartels.
I mean, we had this discussion before a very long time ago and then it seems like libertarianism took off in start up tech spaces...who are relying on the lack of monopolies and price fixing specifically for their own businesses to be able to be successful...so I don't think the libertarian attitude of a lot of HNers really fits, given the amount of effort the government of the past has put into making the market actually "free" in a real sense and not just a liberal philosophical sense of it technically being possible for you to start a company to try to enter a business (only to get eaten alive by an entrenched oligopoly, for instance).
In some types of businesses, I think there is also good reason to not want it to be a free market. For instance, the nuclear weapons business. So we accept that the "free market" shouldn't apply to everything already.
I think with chip companies, the danger is that it is incredibly risky and expensive to enter the business, so you need to be very wary and on the lookout for things like price fixing and oligopolies...it is in the interests of the established players to do those things. And we haven't really seen very many new entrants to these markets for perhaps good reason (being very difficult to get the amount of VC needed for hardware startups and general wariness about hardware startups in the VC world)...but also perhaps if there was a price fixing schemes...that would also be a reason we haven't seen any new entrants.
I mean, we had this discussion before a very long time ago and then it seems like libertarianism took off in start up tech spaces...who are relying on the lack of monopolies and price fixing specifically for their own businesses to be able to be successful...so I don't think the libertarian attitude of a lot of HNers really fits, given the amount of effort the government of the past has put into making the market actually "free" in a real sense and not just a liberal philosophical sense of it technically being possible for you to start a company to try to enter a business (only to get eaten alive by an entrenched oligopoly, for instance).
In some types of businesses, I think there is also good reason to not want it to be a free market. For instance, the nuclear weapons business. So we accept that the "free market" shouldn't apply to everything already.
I think with chip companies, the danger is that it is incredibly risky and expensive to enter the business, so you need to be very wary and on the lookout for things like price fixing and oligopolies...it is in the interests of the established players to do those things. And we haven't really seen very many new entrants to these markets for perhaps good reason (being very difficult to get the amount of VC needed for hardware startups and general wariness about hardware startups in the VC world)...but also perhaps if there was a price fixing schemes...that would also be a reason we haven't seen any new entrants.