Uhm you completely missed the point. How about opening up a history book and learning about how Rockefellers, Vanderbuilts and Carnegies made their fortunes. They ran MONOPOLIES, the true power of the raw capitalist. Do you know what Rockefeller did to his competitors? He literally killed them off, be it through mysterious explosions or mysterious deaths. He also played price wars when he was big enough, at first allowing the mass consumers to benefit but then they paid up the a$$ when the competition was dead and he was able to charge whatever he wanted per barrel UNTIL the government had to step in. Sense the Socialism aspect yet? No capitalist in his right mind wants any competition and without government regulation, he will do whatever needs to be done to eliminate competition. Noone wants competitive efficient markets, they squeeze the margins too much and do not benefit the capitalist goal of perpetual growing profits. This idiotic idea of free market competition only works with govenment involvement. In the REAL WORLD, it's very simple, the big boys form their oligopolies and monopolies and quickly destroy any new entrants through dirty methods. Why bother making it a fair playing field instead of holding a price gouging monopoly? It happened in Europe at the turn of Industrialization, it happened in the US and it recently happened in Russia. Why do you think Yeltsin was at serious risk of being beaten in an election by an extreme Communist candidate? Wolf capitalism, as they call it, does not sit well with the masses.
Well right there, I see no sense in doing any discussion with you. Once you start using labels, which are completely false btw, you have shown that you have a shallow mind. Read some history of the REAL world, you might learn smth.
Capitalism certainly requires mass markets, but the contradiction is that while it requires individual buying power to drive these markets individual capitalists are more than happy to have wage slaves. How do you sell more at a lower price ? Drive labour costs down. Elementary.
Elementary no; wrong. I won't go into marginal cost theory because you are not an economist. But check it out if you wish. You sell at a lower price easily .. it ought to be obvious by going into to any supermarket.
You do write some considered stuff in some of your posts but alas it is you, not me, who has a shallow mind, as you show here. Try reality not some slant on history.
So Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie had GLOBAL Monopolies? If you have info that they did then let's see it. I'm awaiting a book I recently orderd from www.mises.org; "How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present" I imagine it will have a rather different perspective. Free market competition works continuously as in Adam Smith's invisible hand. It ONLY FAILS with government involvement.
Typical appeal to economics to avoid fundamental issues and obscure rather than illuminate. You have choosen a poor example of supermarkets where there is fairly decent evidence (at least in the UK) that the prices paid to their suppliers are unreasonably low and unfair due the supermarkets near monopoly position and somewhat dubious business practices. TESCO in particular is in the spotlight. They must have forgotten about Adam Smith. Nothing free market about all this, but prices are lower.
Come on, I expect some of you to be much smarter than this. I mean, even on that "Rich Kids" HBO documentary, the Vanderbuilt heir says on the subway how his ancestor held the city hostile by a monopoly and was essentially a crook. "They were all crooks back then" he says. Thats how they made their fortunes, it was far through fair market competition. With no government involvement it is completely illogical to have any type of free market competition. You can prove this to yourself through numbers, why bother lowering your prices to consumers and spend capital for R&D when you can simply eliminate new entrants, put up barriers to entry, make oligopoly agreements with your major competitors (they are probably your close friends anyway) and price gouge the consumers. It's all about profit not free market competition. Decreasing your margins does not benefit the raw capitalist's cause, it benefits the consumers at the expense of the capitalist's margins. Enviromental issues cost money, without government intervention, the raw capitalist has no concern for the waste & pollution. Labor issues cost money, without government intervention, he will brings his costs down to the minimum and run it like a slave shop. The first but key labor & anti monopoly laws were created for a reason and this was by a government that felt a much smaller duty toward the masses than it does now. The historical cases of raw capitalism always ended with either government intervention or public outrage. You can theorize all you want or you can go do research on USA domestic politics & big business of the 1890s-1920s. All those laws were created for a reason. I never stated to be a socialist proponent or a capitalism proponent. I'm not leftist or rightist, the whole label system and Rep/Dem system is a joke & a scam. If you're using these labels, you're showing signs of the average American who is easily manipulated by news & media machine. The obvious problems of the capitalist nature are just too obvious to me from what goes on in the current US Healthcare & medical industry hence I have taken the time to do research and reflect back on my history classes. Free market competition is the last thing created by raw capitalism, there is not one case throughout time to show that. US is NOT a capitalist state, it is a welfare state. Every case of raw capitalism resulted in monopolies and oligopolies, it's simple logic why it happens and will happen everytime (unless the composition of the population is way out of the ordinary).