OUR unemployment rate

[tavarish]

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. 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.

When I say regulation, I don't mean state run industries. There is a need for government regulation within large industries, however. The banking crisis of 2007-2008 comes to mind - banks gave out sub-prime loans with knowledge that payback would be questionable at best, thinking that the market would continue to expand, and the bubble burst when debts became so great banks went under overnight, with lots of people cashing out their remaining stock before it fell, leaving the country to pick up the pieces. One of the biggest mistakes in the last decade was the deregulation of the U.S. baking industry.

Monopolies in the real world have huge influence, socially, economically, and politically. There's a reason why they stay at the top, and it's not because they have a genuinely better product or service.

A case in point would be Microsoft. For years they provided an Operating System solution that 99% of people used. They had a monopoly because they were forward thinking, they were successful, and it worked for most of the people. However, in recent years they have been struck back slightly by the increase in Linux netbooks and laptops, the continuous advances of Apple, and of course Solaris. Monopolies are not permanent, and they can easily be crippled by a superior product (Firefox, Chrome, Opera vs Internet Explorer for another example).

They've also had a monopoly because they employed practices that actively stifled development of innovative technologies and competing products. They've lost a few antitrust cases because of this.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/138880/mi...peals.html

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

What monopolies can do is set prices artificially high, since there is no accessible alternative - and slash prices for the same effect. They can also impact legislation having to do with competing technologies and methods. Microsoft has been struck back slightly, but still holds almost 90% of market share.

I understand that companies shouldn't be punished for doing well, but when competition is eliminated due to the size/influence of the company and not its product, it works against the principles of the free market. Competition HELPS a company recognize market trends, and ultimately force the company to provide a better product or risk going under. Artifically creating a market in which no one can compete doesn't help anyone, especially the end-user.

I don't see any problem with Laissez-faire economics; all it requires is people to think about new approaches to government. I used to be a left-wing person, thinking the government should have a control over things, but then I realised that the "government" has no reason to demand such things when it fails so miserably so often. A smaller government that focuses on maintaining human rights and civil liberties is a path to true freedom. A market that runs itself (through Laissez-faire capitalism) is the natural solution to an economy not controlled by a government, but encouraged by one.

You don't see how it can be used by some to simply make a lot of money, and abandon the market?
You don't see how it can promote economic stagnation and artificial price gouging?
You don't see how companies would be able to get away with illegal conduct if there was absolutely no regulating force?
You don't see a problem with not having an institution involved with keeping public interest part of the economic equation?

To say government should have NO PLACE WHATSOEVER in the market would be economic suicide. No country could realistically survive on such a policy. It only leads to robber barons and monopolies with no end in sight. The only natural solution to that would be government intervention.

It's America's social stigma against everything that is socialism, not realizing that the country has many socialized systems, and could benefit from many more.

Ask yourself, what economic systems do the countries with the highest GDPs per capita employ? Is it a coincidence that their governments also have many world-leading human rights and civil liberties initiatives?

It's for the simple fact that these concepts are intertwined and not mutually exclusive.