Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 21:43:41 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com>, paul@freebsd-services.com, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: helping victims of terror Message-ID: <3BB6A2FD.D6546160@mindspring.com> 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>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > Antitrust is a capitalist idea. It is also a good idea, I happen to > > > think, though the Republicans disagree. It doesn't follow that all > > > capitalist ideas are good ideas, if that's what you're implying -- > > > if not, I don't understand what you're implying at all. > > > > I'm pointing out that your statement "free markets don't cure > > all ills" is not applicable to the U.S., since its markets > > are not free markets, they are controlled. In other words, > > Capitalism != Free Markets. > > Hang on. Antitrust == Free Markets. It's in a way the whole point; > no socialist or communist country has such a concept. The reason for this should be obvious: if the state controls the means of production, then it is the state which has the monopoly. Thus the only people available to file an antitrust suit against would be themselves, which is ridiculous. This is the true reason that political philosophies which have as one of their major tenets state control of the means of production do not have laws against monopolies. > The point is that you cannot have competition with a monopoly > or cartels controlling supply, and the point of free markets is > to have competition. I absolutely don't follow your arguments > at all; Capitalism has the concept of permitting regulated monopolies. There are many historical and current examples in the U.S. of regulated monopolies. Professional Baseball is a regulated monopoly. AT&T was a regulated monopoly: prior to their breakup by Judge Greene, AT&T was not permitted to make money in the software market; this is one of the reasons that there were university licenses for the UNIX source code in the first place. In fact, any country which has a patent system supports the idea of regulated monopolies. Any time you have any regulation whatsoever, you do not have a free market: free markets have no constraints. I am not aware of any capitalist country which actually has had a free market, and kept the idea intact for anything other than a very short period of time, in all of history. > I suspect you don't yourself. This is an ad hominim attack, and does nothing to bolster your argument: rather, it detracts from it. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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