From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Libertarianism...
Organization: LLNL
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 19:23:59 GMT

In article <robc.19.0@wicat> robc@wicat (Rob Carlson) writes:
>In article <1993Jan11.074622.27724@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
: From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
: Subject: Re: Libertarianism...
: Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 07:46:22 GMT
: In article <robc.17.0@wicat> robc@wicat (Rob Carlson) writes:
: >In article <C0nwxF.2GI@dscomsa.desy.de> hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker) writes:
: : So what, capitalism has very little to do with free markets. The unregulated
: : free market quickly becomes a monopoly.
: 
: >	I'll need further illumination on this argument. It seems to me that 
: >a monopoly is impossible in a free market. There is absolutely nothing to 
: >prevent another company from competing with the one attempting to be a 
: >monopoly. To obtain a monopoly you will need to get a government to write 
: >laws and regulations that keeps others out of the market. It seems that the 
: >regulated market is the one that causes monopolies. It is always interesting 
: >that more regulation is the usual prescription for the failings of a
: >regulatory policy.
: 
: 	Monopolies can arouse by other routes than government
: intervention.
: 
: 	One is by controlling all sources or the only source of some
: natural resource. Thus, a company that owns all the oil wells in some
: particular area monopolizes the oil production in that area. True,
: this type of monopoly is vulnerable to (say) some rival company
: discovering oil elsewhere, but if no rival company can, then the
: company gets away with it unless some government decrees that it be
: broken up or nationalized.
>
>	Again, you are using implausible situations and even showing them to 
>be so.

	Translation: Here are some hard facts that deflate my
wonderful theories. How can I wave them away?

	Just consider anything "big" and see who's able to get
into that business.

This type of company is not only vulnerable to new dicoveries, it is 
>also vulnerable to new technologies. If, say OPEC, attempts to control the 
>oil market and keep prices artificially high, someone will come up with a 
>way to get oil from shale. Which is exactly what happened in the late 70' - 
>early 80's.

	It is true that would-be monopolies like this one are
potentially self-destructive, but what happens in the process?
Synfuels plants don't just pop into existence at the wave of a magic
wand. They have to be developed and built, and the bugs have to be
worked out of them. And for a big industrial facility, that takes
*time*. During OPEC-style price-gouging, consumers will be paying
exorbitant prices for oil products for a long time before synfuels or
any other such scheme comes online in our current economy.

...You might also keep in mind that oil prices have a minimum price 
>by law. A service station owner will be shutdown for selling gas below the 
>lawful price. Government intervention again causing artificially high prices.

	Where did you get _that_ claim?

: 	Another is by squeezing rival companies out of business by
: price wars and corporate acquisitions. In California in the late 19th
: cy., the Southern Pacific railroad company used that tactic to make
: itself a monopoly in much of California, by buying up rail lines,
: ferry services, etc. It received an abundance of criticism over
: exorbitant freight rates and slow passenger trains (one newspaper
: grumbled that its passengers risked senility on its trains). The SP
: was ultimately less than successful, because other rail lines, such as
: the Western Pacific and the Santa Fe, were eventually built into
: California.

>	Exactly. When SP attempted to build a monopoly they were overrun by 
>competitors. Of course today the govt. would step in and deny the other 
>companies because the SP workers would be out of work. Once again a govt 
>would be necessry to enforce this monopoly.

	Where did you get that version? From a "capitalist good,
government bad" rewrite of history?

-- 
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/lip@s1.gov
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism