...But What About Unethical Business Practices?

When discussing voluntary market exchange, concerns inevitably arise about unethical business practices. Specifically, practices that may not necessarily constitute fraud, but are at the least unsavory, if not purposefully misleading, predatory, or the like. Examples include: confusing contract terms, taking advantage of buyer vulnerability, high interest rates, etc.

Naturally, many of us want a way to disincentivize these behaviors and offer protection to those who might be on the bad end of such deals.

Conventional wisdom acknowledges only one possible solution to this issue: a violent monopoly to review such behaviors, to prohibit and/or penalize some of them. The monopoly is financed by forced payment from potential buyers and is commonly known as "government." To put it another way: in order to try to prevent the chance of being duped into agreeing to give up a portion of our wealth or productivity, each of us must give up a significant portion of our wealth or productivity, whether we agree or not.

Why is a violent monopoly our only solution to helping buyers avoid unethical business practices?

Not only does this "solution" only partly deal with unethical practices, but, axiomatically, uses unethical and immoral practices to achieve the intended goal.

Do we lack imagination? Creativity? Cannot some manner of consumer protection be handled in an ethical and moral fashion? Couldn't people provide services in information, advocacy, certification, evaluation, arbitration, and the like, without relying on the force of government?

Despite the fact that a violent monopoly prohibits, restricts, or crowds out services in these consumer protection areas, a number of people and organizations successfully provide these types of services (Angie's List, for example).

If voluntary services weren't limited limited or crowded out by a violent monopoly, how much better and how much more prevalent might those moral alternatives be?