At 8:56 AM -0500 10/8/98, James A. Donald wrote:
At 04:19 PM 10/6/98 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
Who said anything about 'artificial'? You have a sneaky habit of sticking terms in there where they don't go hoping somebody won't catch it. We're talking a free-market, there are *only* two participants; provider and consumer. If I allow 'artificial' in there then there is the explicit assumption that a third party is now involved. I won't accept a bastardization of free-market in that manner.
Then your argument that free markets lead to monopoly collapses.
You cannot have monopoly (in the sense of the power to extract monopoly of profits) except by state intervention as has been proven by experience time and time again.
You have been unable to provide any examples of monopolies except those created by state intervention, such as the railaways, and those existent soley in your fevered imagination, such as the garment industry.
Given that the textile/garment industry is often one of the first and loudest pro-tarif voices, there might be a government manipulation arguement there as well. -- "To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather naïve, and certainly unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust" http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com::petro@bounty.org