I think you confuse free market with "no rules, everything is allowed", which is not what I am proposing. Those monopolies you mention in the abstract are largely possible because laws make it much more difficult than it could be for competitors to arise. In a free market most monopolies are unstable and don't last long. Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom and Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics both have chapters dedicated to monopolies and how states are the main reason they can be sustained.

Negative externalities, like environmental damage, should ideally be internalized, although I grant that this is not always easy. Private ownership of all land might help, as public ownership dilutes responsibility.

> I think your view is extremely naive.

Isn't it interesting that I think the same about your view? :)

> There have been more than enough examples (cough intel *cough) of monopolistic practices caused by unfair market practices. Using dominance to force suppliers to exclusive use of your products is not a practice enabled by the state.

Microchip fabrication is a very lucrative business, so why aren't there more competitors to Intel? I can think of at least two reasons:

1. It's a very capital-intensive industry. Here all government disincentives to saving, investment and business operation apply, mostly in the way of taxes, but also things like the SEC "accredited investor" qualification, restrictions to investment from foreign sources, barriers to crowdsourcing, licenses and bureaucracy, and a long etcetera.

2. Patents and copyright. Because of these government-granted monopolies competitors cannot copy products, so they represent another barrier to entry. Granted the idea behind patents is to incentivize private-funded research, but the drawback is reduced competition for the time the patents lasts. I believe patents are too long-lived in a world that moves at an ever-increasing pace.

If there were more real competitors there would be more suppliers willing to not sign with Intel. There would also be more competitors in the supplying space, of course.

>> Private ownership of all land might help

> Rivers too? And then what? I can sue you for polluting my downstream, but it's OK if a company just buys up the whole river, then they can ruin it to their heart's content?

People rarely ruin their own property, on the contrary they make an effort to preserve it and keep their value high. Public-owned property, on the other hand, has no such incentive. This is why people don't treat a hotel room or AirBnB with the same care as their own house. Like it or not humans are moved by incentives, not by ideals, so we should take that into account when designing our policies. In other words: policies should be judged by their results, not by their intentions.

In the case of the river it might make sense to have some kind of joint ownership by people and/or companies involved with it. Please notice that private ownership doesn't mean individual. Even assuming that a single company or individual owns the river and that they have more to gain by polluting the river than keeping it clean, they couldn't just dump whatever they want in there, as it gets to the sea. An effort should be made to factor in all negative externalities.

> This is just nonsense.

I don't think so, and neither do many renowned economists. I think you lack imagination or are misconstruing the libertarian proposals. The idea is not "get rid of every and all regulations", but being aware that regulations, taxes and centralization of the economy have rippling effects that, when combined, greatly reduce the wealth generation for all of us.