A free market devoid of all government intervention would hurt the U.S. economy

BOP:The resolution is, ‘A free market devoid of all government intervention would hurt the U.S. economy.’ That means Pro is saying that removing all government interventions would hurt the U.S. economy. If there are 100 total government interventions, and 1 of them is slightly helpful, and the other 99 are incredibly harmful, removing ALL of them would help the U.S. economy overall. Obviously, if this were the case, it would negate the resolution. But under Pro’s interpretation, if that were true, the statement ‘a free market devoid of all government intervention would hurt the U.S. economy’ is true, because of the 1 good intervention. But this is ridiculous—removing all government interventions would help the U.S. economy overall in this scenario.What Pro probably meant to say is that ‘not all government interventions are harmful to the U.S. economy’, or be Con on ‘all government interventions are harmful’, or something like that. But that isn’t what he said.Patents:Lawyers do handle the legal work for pharmaceutical companies, but this just helps prove my point. Pharmaceutical companies are wasting valuable resources hiring lawyers and suing, rather than investing that money in more innovation.I wasn’t saying that the Watt example proved my point, it was an illustration of a general point, showing how patents hurt innovation. But if Pro would like examples more relevant to his main point, the pharmaceutical industry: Patents cause waste, by forcing companies to reengineer a slightly different version of a drug to compete with it. (see: all the different erectile dysfunction drugs you see on TV). About 75% of current R&D spending is on copycats of existing drugs. [1] In addition to wasting resources that could be spent on useful things, patents prevent innovators from producing many potentially helpful drugs. For example, Peter Ringrose, the chief scientific officer of Bristol-Myers Squibb told the New York Times that, "There were more than 50 proteins possibly involved in cancer that the company was not working on because the patent holders either would not allow it or were demanding unreasonable royalties." [2]Pro’s last argument is basically “look at these people who agree with me.” No data or facts, no arguments or logic explaining why patents work, just pro-IP people saying patents attract capital/increase innovation. This is not evidence. I’ve explained why patents hurt innovation, and provided empirical evidence showing the harmful effects of patents in the pharmaceutical industry.Insider Trading:Enron is not an example of insider trading—it was a case of fraud, which is completely different. Insider trading would be if I worked at, say, Microsoft, and I knew that the stock price was much higher than Microsoft was really worth. And so I shorted Microsoft, expecting it to go down to what Microsoft was worth, and made a lot of money. As evidence that insider trading hurts capital accumulation, Pro provides a speech by the SEC. Obviously the SEC thinks it’s doing a good job—this is hardly evidence. It’s absurd to think this claim has any merit. People don’t invest in the stock market because of all the fairness—they invest their hoping to make money. They’ll invest as far as they think they’ll profit from their investments. Insider trading causes some people to profit less, but others, the insider traders to profit more. Even if the people who profit less invested less, the insider traders would invest more, so it would cancel out. And, since insider trading communicates more accurate information to the market, it would create a more profitable market overall, increasing incentives to invest overall.Definitions:Pro states that none of his definitions have the words “private property” in them, so I’m wrong. But even if they don’t, they still all say the same thing as mine. “Free markets are simply millions upon millions of individual decision-makers, engaged in peaceable, voluntary exchange pursuing what they see in their best interests.”How could this definition make any sense if it didn’t imply respect for private property? That’s what Williams means by peaceable and voluntary. If that didn’t include respect for private property rights, then what makes government not part of the free market? If I can pollute my neighbors land in a free market, then why can’t the government tax and regulate his land in a free market? A definition of a free market that doesn’t include property rights is absurd.Furthermore, Pro didn’t define ‘free market’ in his R1, so I can define it as whatever I want.Externalities:Pro argues that without government, there would be no one to enforce property rights. This is false—private firms could compete to provide courts and police. It’s happened before—for hundreds of years, medieval Ireland had anarchic law that protected private property [3], as did the American West in the 19th century [4]. Comparisons between anarchic law and order in the early American West and government control in the same area show that private, competing protectors did a better job of protecting persons and their property than governments. [4] In fact, free competition, not government, is the origin of the English common law system, which our legal system was based on. [5] This market legal system focused on crimes against person and their private property—much more so than government legal systems, which emphasize crimes against the state, or victimless crimes like drug crimes. [5] It focused on forcing criminals to make restitution to their victims, until the kings took over, and changed the focus to punishment and payment to the state in the form of jail and fines. [5] Medieval Iceland also had a successful anarchic legal system. Victims and their families were given a legal right to pursue the criminals that wronged them and force the criminal to pay them restitution, or hire someone to do so. [6] If they couldn’t afford this, they could sell their right to someone who could afford to catch the criminal, so even crimes against the poorest people were punished. [6]Contrary to Pro’s claims, the free market would not only not cause widespread deforestation; it’s the best way to prevent it. Imagine a forest with $1 million worth of wood in it. The property itself is worth $1.2 million (the wood + other stuff the land could be used for). If this forest is privately owned, the owner would, to maximize his profits, replant trees as quickly as he cut them down. If he just cut trees without replanting, he’d get the $1 million in revenue right away, but his land would be worth $1 million less—he’d lose money overall, because of the cost of cutting down the trees. He’d want to continuously replant trees to keep the value of the land high—either so he could sell it to someone else, or cut down more trees later. Now contrast this with government controlled forests. They either wouldn’t be cut down at all, wasting potential wood, or they’d be rented out to firms that cut them. Because the firms are renting the land, they have no incentive to replant trees—they don’t care about the land’s value, because it’s not their land. The government could require companies to replant trees, but they don’t have to, have no incentive to, and therefore often don’t. Sources:[1] Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Against Intellectual Monopoly (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 226.[2] Pollack, A. (2001), "Bristol-Myers and Athersys Make Deal on Gene Patents," New York Times, January 8.[3] https://mises.org...[4] https://mises.org...[5] http://findarticles.com...[6] http://www.daviddfriedman.com...