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trefoil
Registered: Mar 2007
Posts: 3382 |
05-08-12 05:41 PM
You don't need to go back that far in time.
Apple exists today only because, at the time Microsoft was at its peak, the threat and actual existence of anti-trust litigation against it gave Apple the breathing space it needed to keep going and begin the streak it's on today.
Most non-extremists understand what anti-trust legislation does, and why it exists.
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piezoe
Registered: Jan 2006
Posts: 4914 |
05-08-12 05:48 PM
Quote from Scataphagos:
It's not a matter of whether "capitalism is/isn't perfect". Capitalism is the best and HEALTHIEST economic model.... self-policing, self-correcting, rewarding those who work hard/smart.... and self-limiting of government's excessive spending. America was a GREAT country.. primarily because of the individual protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights + Capitalistic economic model.
We've degraded significantly since we started to abandon those principles... ie, Teddy Roosevelt's beginning of the Progressive party in 1906, and Woodrow Wilson giving us the Federal Reserve in 1913.
Both of those assholes are on my "Worst Presidents" list... along with George W. Bush and Odumbo.... others too, of course. (Surprisingly to some ETers, I'm sure... Clinton is NOT on the worst list.)
Though I would have to agree that capitalism is the best and healthiest economic model.. That's about all in your post I can agree with. Self-policing results in chaos, monopolies and crony capitalism. Markets, when left alone do self correct, eventually. We saw what happens when they self-correct: Disaster! We tried laissez faire under Greenspan, our chief regulator that did not believe in regulation. We know what happened. The proper role of government is to protect free enterprise from the capitalists. The U.S. has failed mightily in that role.
Excessive government spending, much of it in the form of corporate welfare, is a separate topic.
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piezoe
Registered: Jan 2006
Posts: 4914 |
05-08-12 05:51 PM
Quote from achilles28:
Competition can only be destroyed by offering a superior product or service at the lowest possible price. That's what you don't understand. Monopolies only exist, at least in the free market, because they are the best provider in the market, at the cheapest price. As soon as a competitor comes up with something cheaper, or better, which offers more value to consumers, market share weighs to the new entrant. The circumstances you allude too don't exist. They can't exist. Standard oil proves it.
Have you totally lost your mind?
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plyka
Registered: Nov 2007
Posts: 181 |
05-08-12 05:53 PM
Quote from Martinghoul:
Because capitalism isn't perfect...
Of course capitalism isn't perfect, nothing is. That's why in a pure laissez-faire capitalist system, you have a self-regulating process. If someone makes the mistake of investing in a bad industry, they lose their money and go out of business. If a bank takes too many risks, the depositors take their money and the bank goes bankrupt. If a hedge fund is overleveraged, guess what, they go out of business when things go bad.
Also, people typically don't take bad risks, because there is no one to save them from going bankrupt when they make bad decisions. There were a litany of reasons why this latest financial market crash came about, but one of the major reasons was overleverage and not taking into account appropriate risk levels. Why do you think this was? In a capitalist system, would this have happened? No. The reason it came about was because they weren't really taking abnormal risks from THEIR perspective.
Every time there has been trouble the government came to the rescue. Whether it was long term capital management and the Asian crisis in 1998, the latin American debt crisis, etc. The FED and government came to the rescue. So if you're a participant, you must add this new variable into your risk measuring algorithm.
Assume that the risks they took (on average) were obscene in the 2000's. They would have been obscene, if they didn't have the extra variable of the FED/Gov coming to the rescue. With that backstop, it reduces your risk and allows you to take more risky bets. If the financial sector believed that no one would be their to bail them out, would they have taken the same risks? Of course not, you don't get that far by taking bad risks. And the few that did, would have gone out of business.
So taking into consideration the gov/fed backstop, the risks they took from their perspective were not out of line. If they made profits, they would get to keep them, if they didn't and were about to go out of business, the government would save them. It's one of the reasons why they took such huge bets.
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achilles28
Registered: Apr 2005
Posts: 7534 |
05-08-12 06:24 PM
Quote from trefoil:
You don't need to go back that far in time.
Apple exists today only because, at the time Microsoft was at its peak, the threat and actual existence of anti-trust litigation against it gave Apple the breathing space it needed to keep going and begin the streak it's on today.
Most non-extremists understand what anti-trust legislation does, and why it exists.
And had the Apple not been sparred, no other OS would enter the market to compete with Bill Gates? And you know this how, exactly? Can you show us your crystal ball?
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