Topic: This sums it up well. (Read 6171 times)

Me too. But this is the first time with a young family, and the wife has never been out of her bubble before. Plus the move is forced by poverty

But still, it's always an adventure, and I'm going to a place I'm very familiar with, and back to some very dear and loyal friends. Thanks for the well wishes.

Kevin Biomech.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to address this properly right now. I'm leaving The People's Republic of Pennsylvania tomorrow morning and will be offline for at least a couple of weeks. I do have a serious rebuttal, but doing it off the top of my head is just ranting. I need to do some research for specific citations and examples.

I brought up Keynes because your position mirrors his (on those rare times when he had any sort of position) and we are talking directly about ideas and ideology that are directly relevant to his general theory (and also Menger and Von Mises, from a whole different angle.)

Anyway, I'm finding some rather interesting people to talk to here. I will return!

Odd choice of words.  Had to read that sentence a couple of times to catch the meaning.  Are you trying to say that monopolies need protection (from the state or anything else) to exist?
That's not just counterintuitive, but in most cases absurd on its face.

First, let me try to define the terms & list a few exceptions like monopolies which (probably) wouldn't exist without support from the state.  
Printing $$$ falls under that, it's explicitly forbidden*.   Here the lines between the monopoly & the state are pretty blurred (“Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws" -M.A. Rothschild, who was dead serious, afaik).  This blurring seems to be both intentional & necessary, though all this is an entirely different topic

The Beef:  Many industries tend towards natural monopolies.  
By definition, these result not from decree, but from purely economic factors:  Barrier to entry, economies of scale, etc.  These types of monopolies may incidentally garner assistance/protection from the state, though that's just gravy -- their success, once established, is guaranteed by anything short of draconian laws against them.  And i do mean draconian with all of the negative connotations -- like chemo for cancer, these laws must dispense with all niceties, or become more than pointless.  The cure will just weaken the patient & cancer will come back.

I'm sure you disagree, just not sure how & why, so i'll wait.


I'm not sure what you're driving at.


Again, i'm not sure why it's worthwhile for us to drag out our hobbyhorses.  I have no interest of pitting Keynes against anyone, and have neither the time nor the motivation for verifying his accuracy.  This is the interwebz.  I'm sure you can dredge up bargeloads of evidence to support your position, though my guess is it's veracity will be much like the Standard Oil links in this thread.  Since i knew none of the people you've mentioned personally, i can't discuss their charm, wit, bravado, tendencies towards inaccuracy or mass appeal with any authority.  At best, i can deal with concrete, objective and verifiable examples of their work.  Though I feel we could discuss basic notions like monopolies without appealing to those mental giants for validation


*Even with money, though, you'll see a few cracks developing, Bitcoin's an example.

Edit: typos

No problem!  When I first started learning about free markets years ago, a good friend tried to bring up the same argument about anti-trust laws to justify government intervention.  I wasn't very knowledgeable about the history of anti-trust laws at the time outside of what is taught in state schools.  I've found that they have one of the largest disconnects between actual historical facts and the state narrative.

To my extensive knowledge their has NEVER been a monopoly that was enforceable absent a state. Going clear back to Babylon.

If you look to more recent history, before they butt raped him, Andrew Carnegie supported the various tarriffs for the STATED SOLE PURPOSE of protecting monopolies.

JMK was not exactly noted for his accuracy, even by his admirers. Charm, wit, and bravado, certainly. But not accuracy. Menger, Von Mises et. al. have won this one by being accurate. Which doesn't make them popular, as their analysis doesn't condone nor call for monopolistic interventions on the part of regulators.

Sarcasm comes across poorly in dry text, anyway. You basically have to know the other person's views well enough to detect that he's saying something that doesn't fit.

Hmm, I have an excuse ready - english is my second language.

(Pssst: that was his point.)

Are you kidding?

Linux and apple worked just fine alongside MS, I used Netscape(now firefox) instead of MS explorer. Now I use Chrome btw.

Thank you, thank you so much, i'm being sincere, nothing tong-in-cheek about this.  I'm grinning from ear to ear as i type this, i haven't felt this giddy in days!  This was awesome!

Your logical fallacy is...

This is a joke?  Somebody's thesis?  a blog post by (is it this guy?  Alex Epstein, energy expert and founder of the Center for Industrial Progress, is one of the world's most innovative champions of fossil fuels. Author of Fossil ...), this character, of our beloved austrian school of economics:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Thomas_DiLorenzo_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg/220px-Thomas_DiLorenzo_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg
and you call that "debunked"?  Come on, did you think i wouldn't look?
If i make a post here saying WW2 never happen, would the validity of WW2's existence be debunked, or even be put in question?

Edit:  Thus far:  A school paper, An oil salesman, and an invisible hander.  I'll look at the rest nao
edit2:  Cato, libber's home turf.
 
edit 3:  Irish Liberty Forum, a deserted blog, looks like a cut & paste from one of the previous  links.  One comment.  

EDIT 4 ($) CAPITALISM, a blog paragraph with cut & paste quote from previous link!  Dude, do you even lift?

EDIT 5:  LOLZ!!!  http://mises.org/, need i say more?!

Edit 6, the last, best and final edit:  LOOOOLLLLOL!!!! http://www.aynrand.org  Well, if her fanbois say it's so, it's so!  Debunked it is!

No problem, I'm pretty good with internet searches and reading.

http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1298&context=theses

http://www.masterresource.org/2011/08/vindicating-capitalism-standard-oil-i/

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-169.html

http://irishliberty.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/the-myth-of-the-standard-oil-monopoly/

http://capitalism.org/antitrust/what-about-rockefellers-standard-oil/

http://mises.org/daily/5274

http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=reg_ls_standard

I'll bite, how & where?

Edit:
"... world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard was an illegal monopoly." -wikip

Who did the debunking, Archie?

Edit 2: Yep

The general scapegoat for monopoly regulation is Standard Oil, which has been debunked.

For the fourth, fourth time i ask you to address the point you continue ignoring, now along with the majority of my points.  Oh, and i finally got what you were thinking re: the fourth point!!!  You think the word "terms" means "cost"!!!!!  No, think "terms of the contract!"  

Edit:  I'd gladly name monopolies not granted by the government, but i know you'll degenerate things to "oh, that wasn't a true monopoly, joe had a choo choo track in his back yard!" and "oh, a monopoly on matches isn't an important monopoly!1!"

Edit2:  I'm sorry i assumed you linked me to the Diseconomies of scale page -- i had no idea what that meant, so i must have just highlighted & wound up there myself.  To say the page's leeding is an understatement.  I don't usually hit the talk pages of random stuff i look up, but this thing was an eye-popper!

I quoted the "natural monopoly" page, and the "economies of scale" page. Not the diesconomies of scale page.

Point me to any monopoly not granted by government, and I'll cede the point.

Remember when Microsoft had a natural monopoly on computer software?  It's a good thing the Feds put a stop to it; now we are able to enjoy Chrome, Firefox, Linux, Apple, etc.!

Have you read anything other than wikip?  Take this silly page you reach for so ardently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomies_of_scale
Have you noticed anything odd about it?  Now, go back & look at the talk page

Edit:  forgot to answer the less bated of your two questions:  Are you saying that monopolies didn't exist before regulations against them, or that you welcome their existence, and a unified body of armed thugs is what you're expecting to happen? 

Uses for Keynesian economics books:

1) Toilet paper
2) Feeding a fire
3) Cleaning cloth