As private equity dominates wheelchair market, users wait months for repairs

No, it isn't, because nobody will buy chairs from a company that does that. In a free market, no company can use the get out of jail free card of "but I was following all the regulations". Businesses have to actually meet customer needs.

And in a free market, customers can't delude themselves that Big Brother is looking out for them (even though Big Brother is not actually doing that); they know that they have to enforce quality if that's what they want. That means customers know that it's on them to be savvy enough to be able to evaluate the quality of products and services.

> That's why we have regulation: to establish the minimum standards.

That's what regulators claim, but all history shows that claim to be wrong. The end result of regulations is to reduce the quality and availability of products, not increase them. The wheelchair market described in the article is a classic example: it's regulated up one side and down the other, yet customers can't get simple things like proper footrests.

> Simple medical devices like wheelchairs (Class I or Class II) are also not super over-regulated, you don't need to do clinical trials to certify them.

Doesn't this contradict your claim that regulation is the only way to avoid exploding chairs? If you don't do clinical trials, how do you know the chairs won't explode one day after the warranty expires?

Of course the answer to this is that the regulators just, you know, look at the design of the chairs to evaluate them for certification. But customers could do the same thing for themselves, at less cost (what, you think those government regulators work for free?). So the regulations are actually adding zero value. But they're certainly not adding zero cost.

> All-in-all it'll cost you around $10m, which is not at all a moat.

So you'll be going into the wheelchair business then? Looks like there's plenty of opportunity to out-compete the current incumbents.

It independently evolved in Rome and India to provide legal personhood to cities, guilds, public works and later, in the former, the Catholic Church.

That's one aspect of capitalism, yes. But in capitalism as it is currently practiced, most of the people who are accumulating capital aren't people that are trying to start new ventures. They are people that are already rich but think they aren't rich enough, who are unable to start new ventures themselves because they have no actual skills at providing valuable products or services, so instead they find some existing venture and siphon off all its wealth. (This pattern is not new, btw; it's the same way the "robber barons" in the late 19th century operated.)

> In a free marked that is absent of regulatory hurdles, it is far from guaranteed that costs would be affordable.

Nothing is ever "guaranteed". But the article under discussion makes it obvious that with regulations in place, not only are costs not affordable, but even the very existence of products meeting customer needs is not happening. A free market couldn't possibly do any worse.

> In a completely free market, devoid of regulation, wheelchair makers can get together and fix prices. Or buy each other.

This would only happen if it were economically more efficient for wheelchairs to be made by a monopoly. I strongly doubt that is the case. It's not the case for the vast majority of products and services. If it's not economically efficient, the monopoly (or price-fixing cartel) will simply be out-competed in a free market, because it will have no way of keeping other companies from producing at a lower cost.

Historically, virtually all monopolies have been the result of government interference. (The original meaning of the word "monopoly" was a royal grant of the exclusive privilege to sell a particular product or service.) Most large corporations today are not the size they are because that is the most economically efficient way to deliver their products or services, but because it's the best way to buy government favors.