A short thought

[fpb]

If you believe in the free market, you MUST NOT allow a monopoly or a cartel to happen. If you do not regard a monopoly or cartel as the worst thing that can happen to a free market, you do not believe in free markets at all. And you will have a sweet time making sure, because businessmen, as a rule, hate competition.

Comments

[superversive.livejournal.com]

And you hated competition, did you? You wanted your field of business to be a monopoly? Please.

I’ve been in business, too, you know, and known huge numbers of other business owners. Not one of them had a monopoly in his field. Not one of them wanted to have a monopoly in his field. Not one of them was the first entrant in his field, or the largest; if there had been monopolies in any of those businesses, every one of those business owners would have been out of business.

Hate competition, my foot.

And I suggest you stop accusing me of ‘free marketeering ideology’. That is demonstrably false and grossly insulting. If you don’t back off and offer an apology for insulting my intelligence repeatedly in this way, I may well decide that you are not worth the trouble of arguing with any longer.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, I can't help this, it is too perfect. On the same day and morning you are yelling at me that businessmen never never never seek after any such things as monopolies and cartels and that I am some sort of moral degenerate for even suggesting that there might be some who do - Britain's most conservative, pro-business newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (also known as the Torygraph) comes out with a front-page story charging most or all of the gas industry with cartelization. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/08/08/cnbills108.xml (Of course, the reason it denounces is that no British businesses are involved. Had Britons been prominent in the cartel, the Torygraph would no doubt have promoted it as a beneficial measure to protect the economy.)