Debate: Which side Government or No government
Side: No government society

This is true but what that boils down to is perceived quality and price. In practice, quality is very hard for the consumer to judge in the things I mentioned. Yes you can tell the difference between a really poor quality item (washing machine, hot dog, socks, etc), but can you tell the "real" quality difference between the "average" brands of these items? Most consumers can't and will just buy the socks from the first bin of socks they see at Walmart. Remember in a free market all of your "choices" from socks to police force are not determined by you, but are determined by the masses of consumers and their "informed" decisions. Imagine when the masses of "informed Walmart shoppers" are determining which police force stays in business in your town.You keep using the word "informed". Each person is informed on their own needs. What makes your arbitrary decisions as to their array of choices, better than those choices refined by the value judgements of millions of market participants?PS. I have nothing against Walmart, it just seems like a good "symbol" of what consumers, given free choice, will gravitate to.What is wrong with spending one's scarce resources as efficiently as possible, according to one's own values?It does not have to be coercive to be bad.Yes, it does. in the standard oil case, the complaint was that prices were too low. Low prices are good for the consumer. The breaking up of standard oil was to "protect" its competitors, not the consumer.A non coercive monopoly is (by definition) putting scarce resources to their most valuable use, as judged by the ones who have demand for those resources. It is trading goods and services at the lowest price the market will bear. This is the core purpose of the market.If it does become coercive, it invites new competition to gain market share. In the absence of government protection, a coercive monopoly cannot survive."[T]here has never been a single clear-cut example of a monopoly created by so-called predatory pricing… claims of predatory pricing are typically made by competitors who are either unwilling or unable to cut their own prices. Thus, legal restrictions on price cutting, in the name of combating "predation," are inevitably protectionist and anti-consumer…"source: The Myth of Predatory Pricing ( http://tinyurl.com/c3g8wbh ) with link to full policy analysisPlenty of monopolies have formed (coercive or not) or been prevented from forming.Non coercive monopolies are benign. International Harvester "Thus, in creating the Federal Farm Board, the precursor of New Deal schemes to prop up farm prices, Hoover appointed leading farm group representatives to the board, and named Alexander Legge, head of International Harvester, as its chairman. To Burner this was an anomaly, and he writes in some wonderment of the altruism Legge displayed in his new job: "Although he was an important businessman, Legge's sympathy lay with the farmers," and he pushed aggressively for farm price supports. The fact that International Harvester was the country's largest manufacturer of farm machinery and therefore benefited from these supports does not seem to register with Burner."source: http://mises.org/daily/4498/American Tobacco"The American Tobacco holding company was broken up by the Supreme Court because of some vague intent to monopolize (again, as evidenced through mergers) but, like Standard Oil, there was a total absence of demonstrable (economic) injury to consumers of tobacco products."source: http://mises.org/daily/2694#4bStandard Oil" It never achieved a monopoly (in 1911, the year of the Supreme Court decision, Standard Oil had roughly 150 competitors, including Texaco and Gulf) that would enable it to monopolistically boost consumer prices."source: http://mises.org/daily/5274U.S. Steel"The federal government attempted to use federal antitrust laws to break up U.S. Steel in 1911, but that effort ultimately failed. Time and competitors have, however, accomplished nearly the same thing. In its first full year of operation, U.S. Steel made 67 percent of all the steel produced in the United States. It now produces less than 10 percent."source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._SteelThis last, is supporting evidence that the market does not favor "monopolies".to be continued....