OUR unemployment rate

[Violet]

I'm not joking. I find it ironic that you say they "kill free enterprise" when the "solution" of regulation kills it even more. If a company is good at something; if it has a large market share, a lot of consumers, why should it be punished? It has those customers because it provides a good service.

Say that a company has a monopoly upon the water market. They are the only company that can provide said resource, and they can choose to set the price however they want. They will thus attempt to maximize their profits... and they will sell only the worst "equal parts muck and water" to those in the worst financial situations (likely for prices that they will only be able to pay for by sacrificing their food, heating, shelter, property, etc), and the somewhat less 'dirty' (maybe toxins, maybe it runs in with the sewage, perhaps the water has become so overpriced that there is no longer an operating sewage for the middle-poor classes, thereby the smaller plumbing businesses have all been declared bankrupt) water is sold at exorbitant prices to the middle and poor classes... to the point where it may be simply more economical to drink the "mudwater" sold to the poorest of the poor.*

*(After all... it is more economical for Water Trust to keep people alive and paying than to let those bastard "maldoctors" from Happycare Incorporated bleed them dry of funds... so that if they run dry their last cents: the Morticians League can rob their families for a decent burial, or cremation, or as is more likely in these troubled times: the economical drop into the sea. So many corpses out in Seagull Cove these days... one might swear that the Morticians League struck a deal with the money grubbers at Fowl Food Delights. It would certainly explain why they are sometimes shooting and collecting the gulls in the cove and shipping them back to Fowl Food Delights. But then... perhaps that was only an economical side effect from the Morticians League's very novel way to extend their services to the poorest of the poor. Oh, but to obtain medical care at Happycare Inc... one must first sign over their body to the Morticians League in event of death... a deal made between the two companies that has made them both much richer over the course of these long days when Lady Liberty is forever shrouded in the smog of the city.) <--Moderately advanced example of what I am referring to.

It's like reading The Jungle... or perhaps more like watching Ferengie and Goblins trading with each other. A free market situation (where there is absolutely no control) is only a good situation if the situation is a utopia where everyone serves each other out of kindness and generosity. Such a condition does not exist... and anyone who believes otherwise can look at Rapture for how brief and insecure such an ideological system is.

There isn't anything stopping another company from being formed with a competitor product, other than the regulation on business that scares off the people with ideas.

What... except that the one with the monopoly controls all of the market already, and can afford to buyout all of the shares of your upstart company? Or perhaps the monopoly has already struck exclusive deals with suppliers who are also monopolies... and the price to beat them out is beyond that which you can afford?

A monopoly is the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service. If it is not exclusive... then it is not a monopoly, and sure other people can get into the market. However, with no regulation of businesses... one only needs to read The Jungle to get a faint idea of what that allows... and that was even with slavery being illegal. There is simply no way a fresh upstart can compete with a monopoly... not unless they are both able to capable of supplying all the things the now former monopoly is capable of supplying and able to compete with their prices and connections. Not to mention that if this is a truly free market... assassins and armies are services too...