Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 12:16:38 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>, paul@freebsd-services.com, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <20010930121638.A757@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <3BB6A2FD.D6546160@mindspring.com>; from tlambert2@mindspring.com on Sat, Sep 29, 2001 at 09:43:41PM -0700 References: <20010927205547.B69066@lpt.ens.fr> <20010927192517.AAA2063@shell.webmaster.com@whenever> <20010927213312.C69066@lpt.ens.fr> <3BB43B65.C3ED251F@mindspring.com> <20010928142314.B7471@lpt.ens.fr> <3BB61126.3321A396@mindspring.com> <20010930003647.A501@lpt.ens.fr> <3BB6A2FD.D6546160@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert said on Sep 29, 2001 at 21:43:41: > In fact, any country which has a patent system supports the > idea of regulated monopolies. Well, ok, but your earlier mail talked about antitrust, and cases where monopolies were broken up for the good of the economic system. > Any time you have any regulation whatsoever, you do not have > a free market: free markets have no constraints. This is the first time I've heard that. Most economic literature I've read, and economists I know, recognise that in the absence of constraints, monopolies are likely to grow. The government has a role in a free-market economy; that role is to provide a level playing field which enables competition to arise, rather than to dictate to or control companies and their production. (I think this goes all the way back to Adam Smith in the 18th century, actually.) Antitrust is part of that role of the government, not a negation of free markets. Other monopolies, such as railways and post, and your examples of professional baseball and AT&T (pre-breakup) may exist; no country is truly free of them, but these are confined to certain sectors in public infrastructure and don't necessarily invalidate the free market nature of the other sectors. I think, in theory, the free marketeers believe that it is best to open all such sectors to competition too, but in practice it is difficult and the results may be bad. These sectors apart, the US is a free market economy, by any definition I've read. Which leads to an example I read of, on why privatisation of such government monopolies, unless done properly, can be a bad thing: the Los Angeles tram system. I can't remember the source, but the story was that it was sold off, and the car companies got together, bought it and dismantled it. (LA is the only city I have seen where there are more cars than pedestrians, in fact there are places where it's hard to see any pedestrians at all.) This is partly an example where the government did not sufficiently encourage competition (the car companies had too much power), and a privatisation which foresaw such possibilities may have worked better; but many privatisation programmes all over the world have gone awry, usually for different reasons. For instance, in Britain there are frequent complaints about the train system after it was privatised. > aware of any capitalist country which actually has had a free > market That's because your definition of a "free market" doesn't fit anything I've heard before. R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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