Why aren't more people Libertarian?

[Paulie]

a monopoly is a state granted privilege that would not exist in a free market.

It makes me sad to discover such remarkable ignorance:

MONOPOLY = exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

A monopoly can be a state granted privilage, but there is nothing preventing a monopoly from existing in a free market whether or not the state grants any privilage. The only thing preventing a monopoly is a MARKET REGULATED BY THE STATE.

A free market is one without state regulation (thus the word "free" and not "regulated")

Libertarians believe in free markets.


Monopolies exist without state regulation (see Standard Oil, late 19th century)


Libertarians believe in monopolies.

Don't you EVER wonder why there seems to fewer and fewer big companies controlling more and more market sectors?

If you ever trade small cap stocks you'll see a TON of developing companies in the pharma sector that have innovative products and can't get them to market because the FDA sits on their asses for years until the companies can't stay solvent any longer.

You don't think Merck and JnJ have anything to do with that?

How about agri? Monsanto gets to slap "organic" on just about anything while much of the local and regional farmers don't have the same luxury. So Monsanto can sell organic products cheaper than the little guy can. If anyone has a monopoly it's Monsanto. As agriculture goes, they run the world.

 

[occupied]

Yes I thought my use of metaphor was fairly obvious. Wall Street has shown again and again how willing they are to exploit loopholes in the law to commit fraud or more precisely it would be considered fraud if we were on top of the many aspects of their daily operations that benefit no one except the glorified used car salesmen who push their worthless paper as sound financial securities.

The only such example I'm aware of is where regulators deliberately cast a blind eye on the quality of mortgages in bundled securities so the government could facilitate it's agenda of "affordable housing." As always, whenever some systemic defect in the market is unveiled, government always has a big hand in it.

I think I actually criticized government regulators of being complicit and lazy and probably outmatched in their duty to police Wall Street, explain how would there be less fraud with no oversight or even a legal framework to prosecute fraud as provided by regulations?

 

[Paulie]

Certainly, we all can easily guess what would happen to the markets and industry if all the cops clocked out and went home. Why they do not see their much wished for economic anarchy as a ready disaster of fraud and corruption continues to escape me. We have it pretty bad now in our weakly regulated system where the worst practices might earn a slap on the wrist, I cannot imagine the catastrophe if they were to abolish the various watchdogs.

if you can find a quote of a libertarian advocating the elimination of police, please post it. Also, if you can find any libertarian proposing to make fraud legal, please post that.

You think we currently have a "weakly regulated system," and you accuse libertarians of being out of touch?

I have heard many a Libertarian claim that insider trading is not fraud and should be legal.


.

Insider trading runs RAMPANT to this day, and there's plenty of regulation on it.

Think about it. How easy would it be to just have someone set up a trading account and execute trades based on your inside information?

It'll never be stopped.

 

[bripat9643]

It makes me sad to discover such remarkable ignorance:

MONOPOLY = exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

A monopoly can be a state granted privilage, but there is nothing preventing a monopoly from existing in a free market whether or not the state grants any privilage. The only thing preventing a monopoly is a MARKET REGULATED BY THE STATE.

There certainly is something preventing monopolies from occurring in an unregulated market: the ability of competitors to enter that market and compete with any companies currently doing business in it.

A free market is one without state regulation (thus the word "free" and not "regulated"). Libertarians believe in free markets. Monopolies exist without state regulation (see Standard Oil, late 19th century). Libertarians believe in monopolies.

Standard Oil was never a monopoly. It always had competitors, so you have failed to provide any evidence to support your claim.

 

[bripat9643]

I have heard many a Libertarian claim that insider trading is not fraud and should be legal.

I would agree with that sentiment. How does simply knowing something and then acting on that knowledge constitute fraud?

 

[Paulie]

If I had inside information that I could cash in on big with a trade, I'd do it.

And anyone here who says they wouldn't is lying.

 

[bripat9643]

If I had inside information that I could cash in on big with a trade, I'd do it.

And anyone here who says they wouldn't is lying.

Yeah, so? How does that constitute fraud?

 

[Paulie]

I have heard many a Libertarian claim that insider trading is not fraud and should be legal.

I would agree with that sentiment. How does simply knowing something and then acting on that knowledge constitute fraud?

It doesn't until the government deems that action AS fraud.

The point is to keep the playing field fair because obviously only a privileged few get to have access to such information as it is.

But like I said earlier, there's no way to stop insider trading. There's way too many ways to pull it off.

 

[Samson]

a monopoly is a state granted privilege that would not exist in a free market.

It makes me sad to discover such remarkable ignorance:

MONOPOLY = exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

A monopoly can be a state granted privilage, but there is nothing preventing a monopoly from existing in a free market whether or not the state grants any privilage. The only thing preventing a monopoly is a MARKET REGULATED BY THE STATE.

A free market is one without state regulation (thus the word "free" and not "regulated")

Libertarians believe in free markets.


Monopolies exist without state regulation (see Standard Oil, late 19th century)


Libertarians believe in monopolies.

So the questions I asked originally are still valid.

"This makes no sense whatsoever. So this hypothetical gasoline company is going to run up prices, once it's somehow put all of its competition under of course, to the point where only a very select group of people will be able to purchase gasoline? How are they going to stay in business? Why won't somebody else just start to compete with them and drive down prices?"

Standard Oil cut prices, it didn't raise them. You sure that's the example you want to use?

The "question" was answered before you answered it.

I certainly am not going to spend all evening explaining Standard Oil's predatory pricing to anyone: Look it the fuck up.

Here are a couple of educational video's to help you enlighten yourself as to why a Monoploy is not good:

[youtube]fqN3Ok6PhfM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[youtube]Uyq7srTy7Zg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Let me know if they're too complicated, and I'll try to find something with cartoons.

 

[Paulie]

If I had inside information that I could cash in on big with a trade, I'd do it.

And anyone here who says they wouldn't is lying.

Yeah, so? How does that constitute fraud?

I'm not sure that it does. There's always going to be SOMEONE who knows significant information about a company. I mean what do you do, ban all corporate executives and their known friends and family from asset trading?

Even THEN, people would still find a way around it.

 

[Clementine]

Seriously, why aren't there more Libertarians out there?

Is it because people don't know what Libertarians stand for?

It's because libertarians tend to be the worst kind of advertisement for their ideology, they swing wildly from incredibly permissive on big business to downright fascist on things like labor unions. American libertarians even seem to hate the ideology of the European libertarians on which they are based. In short they seem to be mainly engaged in disavowing all social responsibility and have zero regard for anyone's freedom other than their own.

Um, how about NO?

We don't have a problem with unions. Workers are free to unite however they want. What we have a problem with is government colluding with them.

Exactly.

 

[occupied]

Still waiting on you to make an argument, or are you no longer interested?

Not really as you are not interested in defending yourself from what I see as serious flaws in your ideology. All you are capable saying is that I am just wrong and ignorant about everything, you really do not know the art of rhetorical defense at all do you?

I posted an example of me defending against substantive critiques of libertarian ideology, redundant though they were. You have yet to make any substantive critique, so what exactly am I supposed to defend against? If you feel you have, then I simply ask that you repeat it. But I've detailed the only arguments you've attempted to make as far as I could tell, and I've clearly refuted them.

Bullshit, I never asked you to repeat to me your tired dogma and I damned sure am not going to just accept your absolute statements as the living gospel. If you have not seen my replies as substantive then just quit replying back to them, simple, otherwise quit acting as if you have reached political perfection and join the fray with the rest of us flawed creatures who suspect that we probably do not know all the answers to every problem but would like to figure them out the right way rather than ignorantly hiding behind a false front refusing to honestly examine your beliefs with the group.

 

[bripat9643]

The "question" was answered before you answered it.

I certainly am not going to spend all evening explaining Standard Oil's predatory pricing to anyone: Look it the fuck up.

Here are a couple of educational video's to help you enlighten yourself as to why a Monoploy is not good:

Let me know if they're too complicated, and I'll try to find something with cartoons.

In other words, you don't want to support your claim. The theory of "predatory pricing" is a myth. No company ever engaged in it, and no company every would. The complaint against Standard Oil was never that it lowered its prices and then raised them. The complaint was that it lowered its prices and then lowered them again. Standard Oil never increased its prices in the whole history of Standard Oil. It continually lowered them.

Your theory of "predatory pricing" is a cartoon. It's a fiction that no company has ever perpetrated. It was invented by statist thugs to justify government taking control of private companies.

 

[Paulie]

Not really as you are not interested in defending yourself from what I see as serious flaws in your ideology. All you are capable saying is that I am just wrong and ignorant about everything, you really do not know the art of rhetorical defense at all do you?

I posted an example of me defending against substantive critiques of libertarian ideology, redundant though they were. You have yet to make any substantive critique, so what exactly am I supposed to defend against? If you feel you have, then I simply ask that you repeat it. But I've detailed the only arguments you've attempted to make as far as I could tell, and I've clearly refuted them.

Bullshit, I never asked you to repeat to me your tired dogma and I damned sure am not going to just accept your absolute statements as the living gospel, if you have not seen my replies as substantive then just quit replying back to them, simple, otherwise quit acting like as if you have reached political perfection and join the fray with the rest of us flawed creatures who suspect that we probably do not know all the answers to every problem but would like to figure them out the right way rather than ignorantly hide behind a false front refusing to honestly examine your beliefs with the group.

That's the longest sentence I've ever seen in my life.

 

[Samson]

There certainly is something preventing monopolies from occurring in an unregulated market: the ability of competitors to enter that market and compete with any companies currently doing business in it.

It is this level of astonishing naivete that makes reading discussion boards so entertaining.

A monopolist creates something called "barriers to market entry."


Be a big boy: Look it up all by yourself.

 

[bripat9643]

Not really as you are not interested in defending yourself from what I see as serious flaws in your ideology. All you are capable saying is that I am just wrong and ignorant about everything, you really do not know the art of rhetorical defense at all do you?

I posted an example of me defending against substantive critiques of libertarian ideology, redundant though they were. You have yet to make any substantive critique, so what exactly am I supposed to defend against? If you feel you have, then I simply ask that you repeat it. But I've detailed the only arguments you've attempted to make as far as I could tell, and I've clearly refuted them.

Bullshit, I never asked you to repeat to me your tired dogma and I damned sure am not going to just accept your absolute statements as the living gospel, if you have not seen my replies as substantive then just quit replying back to them, simple, otherwise quit acting like as if you have reached political perfection and join the fray with the rest of us flawed creatures who suspect that we probably do not know all the answers to every problem but would like to figure them out the right way rather than ignorantly hide behind a false front refusing to honestly examine your beliefs with the group.

Arrogant bluster is the only argument occupied has. He has no facts or logic at his disposal. Every time he attempts an argument to support his claims he gets a shellacking.

 

[Paulie]

There certainly is something preventing monopolies from occurring in an unregulated market: the ability of competitors to enter that market and compete with any companies currently doing business in it.

It is this level of astonishing naivete that makes reading discussion boards so entertaining.

A monopolist creates something called "barriers to market entry."


Be a big boy: Look it up all by yourself.

Those barriers are typically REGULATIONS.

The only other real barrier is the bigger company being able to price lower because of its output. Walmart is a good example. But not a common one.

 

[bripat9643]

It is this level of astonishing naivete that makes reading discussion boards so entertaining.

A monopolist creates something called "barriers to market entry."

Be a big boy: Look it up all by yourself.

I agree, your naivete is astonishing and entertaining.

How does a corporation prevent other corporations from competing with it?

I'm certain your response will be hilarious.

Oh, and don't tell me to do your homework for you. That's the tactic of someone who isn't willing to back his claims - a loser, in other words.

Also, don't regurgitate the standard statist excuses for interfering in the market to me. Those claims are precisely what's being disputed here. We aren't required to accept all your bullshit interventionist theories at face value. Prove them or shut up.

 

[occupied]

I posted an example of me defending against substantive critiques of libertarian ideology, redundant though they were. You have yet to make any substantive critique, so what exactly am I supposed to defend against? If you feel you have, then I simply ask that you repeat it. But I've detailed the only arguments you've attempted to make as far as I could tell, and I've clearly refuted them.

Bullshit, I never asked you to repeat to me your tired dogma and I damned sure am not going to just accept your absolute statements as the living gospel, if you have not seen my replies as substantive then just quit replying back to them, simple, otherwise quit acting like as if you have reached political perfection and join the fray with the rest of us flawed creatures who suspect that we probably do not know all the answers to every problem but would like to figure them out the right way rather than ignorantly hide behind a false front refusing to honestly examine your beliefs with the group.

That's the longest sentence I've ever seen in my life.

Beautiful isn't it?

 

[g5000]

if you can find a quote of a libertarian advocating the elimination of police, please post it. Also, if you can find any libertarian proposing to make fraud legal, please post that.

You think we currently have a "weakly regulated system," and you accuse libertarians of being out of touch?

I have heard many a Libertarian claim that insider trading is not fraud and should be legal.


.

I would agree with that sentiment. How does simply knowing something and then acting on that knowledge constitute fraud?

You said "if you can find any libertarian proposing to make fraud legal, please post that."


Well, there you go. You just said insider trading should be legal, and now I have posted it.


.