The article linked was very interesting and got me thinking about "natural monopolies" being beneficial for capital accumulation.
I think it is all a mater of perspective and in the end it all comes down to a single moral principle: don't initiate force against others. Thus free competition will result in natural monopolies which allow capital accumulation and that is just the nature of good competition. Unnatural monopolies are the ones that are dangerous (such as those granted to patent / copyright holders) or via regulation. Anti-trust laws are also a major problem.
The article linked was very interesting and got me thinking about "natural monopolies" being beneficial for capital accumulation.
I think it is all a mater of perspective and in the end it all comes down to a single moral principle: don't initiate force against others. Thus free competition will result in natural monopolies which allow capital accumulation and that is just the nature of good competition. Unnatural monopolies are the ones that are dangerous (such as those granted to patent / copyright holders) or via regulation. Anti-trust laws are also a major problem.
YES! These are all covered in the book.
...He also talks about marketing, increasing your monopolistic advantage by orders of magnitude in comparison to the next competitor, and why it matters so much to build something that's never been done before instead of wasting time on incremental improvements (like what most of Silicon Valley has been doing since the dot com bubble burst).
The article linked was very interesting and got me thinking about "natural monopolies" being beneficial for capital accumulation.
I think it is all a mater of perspective and in the end it all comes down to a single moral principle: don't initiate force against others. Thus free competition will result in natural monopolies which allow capital accumulation and that is just the nature of good competition. Unnatural monopolies are the ones that are dangerous (such as those granted to patent / copyright holders) or via regulation. Anti-trust laws are also a major problem.
The article linked was very interesting and got me thinking about "natural monopolies" being beneficial for capital accumulation.
I think it is all a mater of perspective and in the end it all comes down to a single moral principle: don't initiate force against others. Thus free competition will result in natural monopolies which allow capital accumulation and that is just the nature of good competition. Unnatural monopolies are the ones that are dangerous (such as those granted to patent / copyright holders) or via regulation. Anti-trust laws are also a major problem.
In what way would "natural" monopolies differ from "unnatural" one's in the real world?
In what way would "natural" monopolies differ from "unnatural" one's in the real world?
that would be an illegal use of market power.
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
You are right... governments are the realization of an economy ruled by crime syndicates and we are living in a "free market" that hasn't found a product or service that is able to protect us from these crime syndicates.
You speak as if governments do not violate the very laws they impose on everyone else...
1) they steal
2) they kill
3) they lie, cheat, and defraud
4) they unilaterally break contracts
5) they threaten at gun point
6) they form monopolies on justice, law, etc..
7) there is no "government" to keep the government in check....
Bottom line... free markets will have to defend us against governments not the other way around.
Thank you bytemaster and thank you G1ng3rBr34dM4n
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
You are right... governments are the realization of an economy ruled by crime syndicates and we are living in a "free market" that hasn't found a product or service that is able to protect us from these crime syndicates.
You speak as if governments do not violate the very laws they impose on everyone else...
1) they steal
2) they kill
3) they lie, cheat, and defraud
4) they unilaterally break contracts
5) they threaten at gun point
6) they form monopolies on justice, law, etc..
7) there is no "government" to keep the government in check....
Bottom line... free markets will have to defend us against governments not the other way around.
+5% +5% +5%
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
You are right... governments are the realization of an economy ruled by crime syndicates and we are living in a "free market" that hasn't found a product or service that is able to protect us from these crime syndicates.
You speak as if governments do not violate the very laws they impose on everyone else...
1) they steal
2) they kill
3) they lie, cheat, and defraud
4) they unilaterally break contracts
5) they threaten at gun point
6) they form monopolies on justice, law, etc..
7) there is no "government" to keep the government in check....
Bottom line... free markets will have to defend us against governments not the other way around.
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
Illegal, but not immoral. Using force to prevent them from selling at a loss would be immoral but apparently totally legal.
Maybe in some universe (the gates of heaven?), morality is the bottom line. Without antitrust laws, I don't think the majority of market actors will make decisions based on morality. What we'll get, instead, is an economy ruled by crime syndicates. In the absence of government power, we simply get private actors who (ab)use their strength to control others. Russian mafia? Mexican drug lords? They use 10x the force, since there's no government to keep them in check (or they own that government). I'd rather have a flawed democratic government with half-assed regulations that are enforced to protect the free market and the consumer.
I wish that using force were not part of human nature, but for many people it seems to be par for the course.
You are right... governments are the realization of an economy ruled by crime syndicates and we are living in a "free market" that hasn't found a product or service that is able to protect us from these crime syndicates.
You speak as if governments do not violate the very laws they impose on everyone else...
1) they steal
2) they kill
3) they lie, cheat, and defraud
4) they unilaterally break contracts
5) they threaten at gun point
6) they form monopolies on justice, law, etc..
7) there is no "government" to keep the government in check....
Bottom line... free markets will have to defend us against governments not the other way around.
The Taira and the Minamoto clashed again in 1180, beginning the Gempei War, which ended in 1185. Samurai fought at the naval battle of Dan-no-ura, at the Shimonoseki Strait which separates Honshu and Kyushu in 1185. The victorious Minamoto no Yoritomo established the superiority of the samurai over the aristocracy. In 1190 he visited Kyoto and in 1192 became Sei'i-taishÅgun, establishing the Kamakura Shogunate, or Kamakura Bakufu. Instead of ruling from Kyoto, he set up the Shogunate in Kamakura, near his base of power. "Bakufu" means "tent government", taken from the encampments the soldiers would live in, in accordance with the Bakufu's status as a military government.[5]
Over time, powerful samurai clans became warrior nobility, or "buke", who were only nominally under the court aristocracy. When the samurai began to adopt aristocratic pastimes like calligraphy, poetry and music, some court aristocrats in turn began to adopt samurai customs. Despite machinations and brief periods of rule by emperors, real power was then in the hands of the Shogun and the samurai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samurai#Ashikaga_Shogunate
This is the main reason we need governments. If we don't accept democratic governments we typically end up with other forms of government which are worse and laws which are kept entirely secret or perhaps just based on the whims of those in charge of the force.
+5%This is the main reason we need governments. If we don't accept democratic governments we typically end up with other forms of government which are worse and laws which are kept entirely secret or perhaps just based on the whims of those in charge of the force.
Your premise is that we must choose one government.
The ideal government is decentralized with checks and balances on each competing component that keep them from acting except to restore a condition of zero force on the governed.(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/Rock-paper-scissors.svg/460px-Rock-paper-scissors.svg.png)
Hmmm. I think there were even some guys wearing short pants and wigs that tried that a couple centuries ago...
@Bitsapphire can you define what qualifies as work? Work seems like it could be anything which people value a lot. In that case Facebook must be doing a lot of work as a social network because look at all the money it generates from the data people contribute to it.
How do automated corporations play into it? Sooner or later the value of human labor at least for the vast majority of humans will not be very much compared to machine. Maybe this would indicate that deflation makes sense?
The article linked was very interesting and got me thinking about "natural monopolies" being beneficial for capital accumulation.+5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5% +5%
I think it is all a mater of perspective and in the end it all comes down to a single moral principle: don't initiate force against others. Thus free competition will result in natural monopolies which allow capital accumulation and that is just the nature of good competition. Unnatural monopolies are the ones that are dangerous (such as those granted to patent / copyright holders) or via regulation. Anti-trust laws are also a major problem.