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We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement. It is absolutely ridiculous to allow companies to behave this way. And before some

We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement. It is absolutely ridiculous to allow companies to behave this way. And before someone says that "free market is always good and government is bad", the optimum free market strategy if there is no government is to hire hitmen to assassinate the executives of competidor companies. A real competitive free market will always require the government to prohibit companies from forming artificial mottes around their monopolies.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
We simply need meaningful penalties that involve jail time and % fines, on top of the ill gotten gains. The current model is steal $1 million, get fined $250k, enjoy the profits. Sadly, that'll never happen, because CU made bribery legal and who's congress going to listen to? The 100s of millions they allegedly govern or the guy that handed them $25k for a kitchen remodel. Spoiler: It's not the citizens.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > Sadly, that'll never happen, because CU made bribery legal Citizens United was a USSC ruling; TFA is about Poland. Poland is in the EU; NEWAG seems to be a formerly state-owned company, that was fully privatized in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newag I'm awfully worried about both Poland and Hungary, and their place in the EU even though I'm a brit, and now out of the EU. I think both countries should have had their EU membership suspended years ago, for corruption; meddling with judicial appointments; and generally not allowing free media. I suspect Hungary is much worse, but for me, a major reason for supporting Brexit was that I didn't want to be in a political alliance with countries that didn't comply with international treaties, which the EU was so reluctant to enforce.
  - vjjsejj 3y ago
    > and generally not allowing free media To be fair not something Britain can be particularly proud of considering its libel laws.
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    You're absolutely right. My bad.
  - synecdoche 3y ago
    Arguably free media is suppressed in most of Europe. In Sweden state press subsidies are not given to press considered extreme by those in power to give it. Of course, and no wonder, those in power is the opposition. The situation is similar in other European countries.
SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
The optimal free market with no government is for corporations (collections of people) to use violent force to enforce their goals. A sufficiently powerful corporation is indistinguishable from a government.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  A sufficiently powerful corporation is worse than a government, because the current government at least pretends to play by the rules and in a lot of cases, does. The issue is the rules themselves, which were crafted by? Corps. Corps are entirely different. They push harder and harder and harder for PROFITS and will inevitably cross lines. When crossing those lines not only has no meaningful penalty, but actually turns a profit, after the fines are subtracted, they will not only continue to do it, but push even harder. After all, there's no real consequences, so why worry?
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    Authoritarian governments exist, and are more common than democratic ones. Besides, democratic corporations exist too. They are just incredibly rare.
    - sonicanatidae 3y ago
      Mind providing an example of a democratic corp? I've never known of one.
      - marcosdumay 3y ago
        Cooperatives used to be more common than they are now. And used to be democratic. Software consultancies is one of the markets where democratic consultancies were common enough for one to see them. But now the world is property of a handful of corporations, so you won't see any contemporary example.
  - xp84 3y ago
    > A sufficiently powerful corporation is worse than a government, because the current government at least pretends to play by the rules The most despotic and scary governments of history would probably like a word with you. Maintaining a believable pretense of following any rules is a luxury we take for granted in many countries today, but Mao and Stalin didn't worry about the appearance of propriety. Not really arguing against your main point though, I think you're right. Just don't forget how bad totalitarian governments can be.
rootusrootus 3y ago
> And before someone says that "free market is always good and government is bad" I've never really understood that dichotomy myself. The free market IS good, that is for sure. But it won't exist unless the gov't uses its power to create it. Companies have to be kept small enough that there will always be a bunch of choices. And that won't happen by itself.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      There's a special kind of delusion easily afflicted by successful people - that because they were so successful, it was because they are so much better. Therefore they will easily believe they will come out on top also in societal collapse. I think such reasoning is behind many super-expensive bug out plans with fortified villas and bunkers.
      - rootusrootus 3y ago
        How many successful people are building bunkers? Isn't that just a pasttime of the very wealthy? There are a whole lot of regular successful people in this world that aren't building out doomsday scenarios in their spare time. And I'd argue that for the most part these normal successful people are generally justified in thinking they are successful on the merits. Luck has a role, but so does grit.
        actionfromafar 3y ago
        Most aren’t building bunkers. I just took that as a colourful illustration of how success can skew your perception of reality. This is not even necessarily related to if the success is on their merits or not. I think one can fall into this trap regardless of how one got there.
JoshTriplett 3y ago
> the optimum free market strategy if there is no government is to hire hitmen to assassinate the executives of competidor companies There's a huge difference between opposing regulation and permitting murder. Equating the two is a strawman, given that there are a large number of people who oppose various regulations and very few who would want to legalize murder.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  I mean.. I'm not up for outright legalizing murder, but as the world turns, I understand it more and more. Some people just need a killin.
thegrimmest 3y ago
Funny that your optimum free market strategy is murder. A market where murder is a legitimate strategy is anything but free. In fact a good litmus test as to the freedom of a market (or any social structure) is the legitimacy of murder. Comparing murder to antitrust therefore seems to be a pretty weak argument. Deontological libertarians would view the use of force required to enforce antitrust as authoritarian overreach. They would see no moral justification in the enforcement of arbitrary limitations on the voluntary transactions of consenting parties. They would see these as tyrannical. This stems from a core disagreement about the nature of society. Some people see it a as a collective project for the good of all participants (the sticky points being the definition of "good", and the non-optionality of "collective"). Others see it as simply an agreement to coexist peacefully and cooperate only voluntarily, while embracing the Darwinian nature of said coexistence. Each side is well meaning I'm sure, but I find it hard to reconcile these two worldviews.
- discreteevent 3y ago
  Coexistence - peaceful - darwinian. A circle that's hard to square.
  - thegrimmest 3y ago
    I don't see why. It's basically what happens in any free society - we (as individuals, organizations, social orders) compete over finite resources. Disputes are resolved via due process. Winners win and losers lose. The difference between civilized and uncivilized is only in which actions are available to the players, not in the nature of the game.
    - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      The problem is that competition for resources is taken as the essence of markets, which it is not. Competition exists in markets, sure, but it's not the point of the market per se. That's psychotic. This is the problem when decontextualized practicalities become enshrined as abstracted ideological and moral tenets of the highest order. According to your view, if I were starving, and you had a warehouse full of food, then I would be stealing if I were to break in and take some food to survive. Theft is always wrong by definition (you cannot say it is sometimes justified in ad hoc sense while remaining coherent; if the law just is competition for resources, full stop, then the starving man is just a loser, full stop), so I, the starving man, am morally obligated to accept my death outside the walls of that warehouse. But as I said, this would be an incorrect view of markets, which occur within societies, to enable the good. Human beings are social animals, and so our good depends on society. The common good is also prior to private property. A scenario where people are starving, but where there are warehouses full of food, is one that demonstrates some degree of dysfunction.
ablob 3y ago
As far as I understand the conditions of a free market are not met in this case: According to the english Wikipedia: * A capitalist free-market economy is an economic system where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand [...] Here one can argue that the available services (i.e. maintaining a train) are not set freely by the forces of supply and demand, but by the constructor of the train; at least to some extend. You said that "[a] real competitive free market will always require the government to prohibit companies from forming artificial mottes around their monopolies". I partially agree in this case. A free market that contains competitors that are able to fully satiate it will always require a government that hinders it from working towards a controlled market. By a controlled market I mean monopoles, oligopoles, cartels, or otherwise controlled environments(1). So if there's no competitor I can walk to in case I am unhappy with my trading partner the market isn't free by definition. I can hardly think of bakeries in town requiring governmental intervention (unless they form a cartel, that is). Not every market should be free, however. I guess you've just met too many hard-liners arguing for shady business practices in the name of the free market. I'd argue that a shady business will cease to exist in a free market due to the customers running away. PS: Funny enough, I am fully onboard with stronger anti-trust enforcement (legislation only if that proves to be insufficient), only that I am doing it as a proponent to regain market freedom. (1) Intentionally left broad as I can't be bothered to come up with a definition that fits what I have in mind.
trinsic2 3y ago
> We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement. It is absolutely ridiculous to allow companies to behave this way. You think? I have been wondering the same thing myself for years and i'm still flabbergasted that people don't treat this stuff more seriously.
gosub100 3y ago
> We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement The Microsoft disaster you are replying to could just as easily be blamed on the government in the first place. Why were they so slow to react? Why couldn't the FTC have seen that, or been alerted and acted immediately? There is no legitimate reason, other than the government is a socialist organization that has no incentive to actually get anything done. This is why USPS, VA, Amtrak, etc all suck. Throwing more government at the problem will have the opposite effect: less will get done!
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
> "free market is always good and government is bad" This view seems especially American, but it is also a very liberal view (in the philosophical sense, not the somewhat weird partisan sense). Liberalism reconceives the common good, private property, and freedom dramatically. Whereas traditionally, the state is viewed as steward of the common good (that is its essential function), and private property as something instituted for the sake of the common good, liberalism conceives of private property as primary and the common good as something grudgingly ceded from the private good. Freedom is traditionally understood as the ability to do what one ought (the freedom to be what you are by nature, that is, a human being), but liberalism construes it as the ability to do whatever you please. (It's an odd idea. If I happen to want to gouge my eyes out and cut my arms off for no reason, doing so does not make me free. It makes me less free, because now I am less capable of functioning fully as a human being. I am confined and prevented from doing all sorts of good things. Human nature is the yardstick by which freedom is measured.) What does this all mean? Well, it means government becomes construed as an artificial, even malicious construct that stands in the way of freedom. Certainly corruption exists, but this is not a valid argument against government as such. And besides, without government, something fills the vacuum. The absence of authority isn't freedom, but exposure to power that lacks authority. So, yeah, free markets are good, as long as freedom (and thus the good) is construed in the traditional, not the liberal sense. That means that government, properly understood, is not an obstacle to free markets, but a sine qua non of truly free markets.
stevage 3y ago
No one literally says that.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

We simply need meaningful penalties that involve jail time and % fines, on top of the ill gotten gains. The current model is steal $1 million, get fined $250k, enjoy the profits. Sadly, that'll never happen, because CU made bribery legal and who's congress going to listen to? The 100s of millions they allegedly govern or the guy that handed them $25k for a kitchen remodel. Spoiler: It's not the citizens.

denton-scratch 3y ago
> Sadly, that'll never happen, because CU made bribery legal Citizens United was a USSC ruling; TFA is about Poland. Poland is in the EU; NEWAG seems to be a formerly state-owned company, that was fully privatized in 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newag I'm awfully worried about both Poland and Hungary, and their place in the EU even though I'm a brit, and now out of the EU. I think both countries should have had their EU membership suspended years ago, for corruption; meddling with judicial appointments; and generally not allowing free media. I suspect Hungary is much worse, but for me, a major reason for supporting Brexit was that I didn't want to be in a political alliance with countries that didn't comply with international treaties, which the EU was so reluctant to enforce.
- vjjsejj 3y ago
  > and generally not allowing free media To be fair not something Britain can be particularly proud of considering its libel laws.
- sonicanatidae 3y ago
  You're absolutely right. My bad.
- synecdoche 3y ago
  Arguably free media is suppressed in most of Europe. In Sweden state press subsidies are not given to press considered extreme by those in power to give it. Of course, and no wonder, those in power is the opposition. The situation is similar in other European countries.

SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago

The optimal free market with no government is for corporations (collections of people) to use violent force to enforce their goals. A sufficiently powerful corporation is indistinguishable from a government.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
A sufficiently powerful corporation is worse than a government, because the current government at least pretends to play by the rules and in a lot of cases, does. The issue is the rules themselves, which were crafted by? Corps. Corps are entirely different. They push harder and harder and harder for PROFITS and will inevitably cross lines. When crossing those lines not only has no meaningful penalty, but actually turns a profit, after the fines are subtracted, they will not only continue to do it, but push even harder. After all, there's no real consequences, so why worry?
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Authoritarian governments exist, and are more common than democratic ones. Besides, democratic corporations exist too. They are just incredibly rare.
  - sonicanatidae 3y ago
    Mind providing an example of a democratic corp? I've never known of one.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Cooperatives used to be more common than they are now. And used to be democratic. Software consultancies is one of the markets where democratic consultancies were common enough for one to see them. But now the world is property of a handful of corporations, so you won't see any contemporary example.
- xp84 3y ago
  > A sufficiently powerful corporation is worse than a government, because the current government at least pretends to play by the rules The most despotic and scary governments of history would probably like a word with you. Maintaining a believable pretense of following any rules is a luxury we take for granted in many countries today, but Mao and Stalin didn't worry about the appearance of propriety. Not really arguing against your main point though, I think you're right. Just don't forget how bad totalitarian governments can be.

rootusrootus 3y ago

> And before someone says that "free market is always good and government is bad" I've never really understood that dichotomy myself. The free market IS good, that is for sure. But it won't exist unless the gov't uses its power to create it. Companies have to be kept small enough that there will always be a bunch of choices. And that won't happen by itself.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
[flagged]
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    There's a special kind of delusion easily afflicted by successful people - that because they were so successful, it was because they are so much better. Therefore they will easily believe they will come out on top also in societal collapse. I think such reasoning is behind many super-expensive bug out plans with fortified villas and bunkers.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      How many successful people are building bunkers? Isn't that just a pasttime of the very wealthy? There are a whole lot of regular successful people in this world that aren't building out doomsday scenarios in their spare time. And I'd argue that for the most part these normal successful people are generally justified in thinking they are successful on the merits. Luck has a role, but so does grit.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Most aren’t building bunkers. I just took that as a colourful illustration of how success can skew your perception of reality. This is not even necessarily related to if the success is on their merits or not. I think one can fall into this trap regardless of how one got there.

JoshTriplett 3y ago

> the optimum free market strategy if there is no government is to hire hitmen to assassinate the executives of competidor companies There's a huge difference between opposing regulation and permitting murder. Equating the two is a strawman, given that there are a large number of people who oppose various regulations and very few who would want to legalize murder.

sonicanatidae 3y ago
I mean.. I'm not up for outright legalizing murder, but as the world turns, I understand it more and more. Some people just need a killin.

thegrimmest 3y ago

Funny that your optimum free market strategy is murder. A market where murder is a legitimate strategy is anything but free. In fact a good litmus test as to the freedom of a market (or any social structure) is the legitimacy of murder. Comparing murder to antitrust therefore seems to be a pretty weak argument. Deontological libertarians would view the use of force required to enforce antitrust as authoritarian overreach. They would see no moral justification in the enforcement of arbitrary limitations on the voluntary transactions of consenting parties. They would see these as tyrannical. This stems from a core disagreement about the nature of society. Some people see it a as a collective project for the good of all participants (the sticky points being the definition of "good", and the non-optionality of "collective"). Others see it as simply an agreement to coexist peacefully and cooperate only voluntarily, while embracing the Darwinian nature of said coexistence. Each side is well meaning I'm sure, but I find it hard to reconcile these two worldviews.

discreteevent 3y ago
Coexistence - peaceful - darwinian. A circle that's hard to square.
- thegrimmest 3y ago
  I don't see why. It's basically what happens in any free society - we (as individuals, organizations, social orders) compete over finite resources. Disputes are resolved via due process. Winners win and losers lose. The difference between civilized and uncivilized is only in which actions are available to the players, not in the nature of the game.
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    The problem is that competition for resources is taken as the essence of markets, which it is not. Competition exists in markets, sure, but it's not the point of the market per se. That's psychotic. This is the problem when decontextualized practicalities become enshrined as abstracted ideological and moral tenets of the highest order. According to your view, if I were starving, and you had a warehouse full of food, then I would be stealing if I were to break in and take some food to survive. Theft is always wrong by definition (you cannot say it is sometimes justified in ad hoc sense while remaining coherent; if the law just is competition for resources, full stop, then the starving man is just a loser, full stop), so I, the starving man, am morally obligated to accept my death outside the walls of that warehouse. But as I said, this would be an incorrect view of markets, which occur within societies, to enable the good. Human beings are social animals, and so our good depends on society. The common good is also prior to private property. A scenario where people are starving, but where there are warehouses full of food, is one that demonstrates some degree of dysfunction.

ablob 3y ago

As far as I understand the conditions of a free market are not met in this case: According to the english Wikipedia: * A capitalist free-market economy is an economic system where prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand [...] Here one can argue that the available services (i.e. maintaining a train) are not set freely by the forces of supply and demand, but by the constructor of the train; at least to some extend. You said that "[a] real competitive free market will always require the government to prohibit companies from forming artificial mottes around their monopolies". I partially agree in this case. A free market that contains competitors that are able to fully satiate it will always require a government that hinders it from working towards a controlled market. By a controlled market I mean monopoles, oligopoles, cartels, or otherwise controlled environments(1). So if there's no competitor I can walk to in case I am unhappy with my trading partner the market isn't free by definition. I can hardly think of bakeries in town requiring governmental intervention (unless they form a cartel, that is). Not every market should be free, however. I guess you've just met too many hard-liners arguing for shady business practices in the name of the free market. I'd argue that a shady business will cease to exist in a free market due to the customers running away. PS: Funny enough, I am fully onboard with stronger anti-trust enforcement (legislation only if that proves to be insufficient), only that I am doing it as a proponent to regain market freedom. (1) Intentionally left broad as I can't be bothered to come up with a definition that fits what I have in mind.

trinsic2 3y ago

> We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement. It is absolutely ridiculous to allow companies to behave this way. You think? I have been wondering the same thing myself for years and i'm still flabbergasted that people don't treat this stuff more seriously.

gosub100 3y ago

> We really need to have much stronger anti trust legislation and enforcement The Microsoft disaster you are replying to could just as easily be blamed on the government in the first place. Why were they so slow to react? Why couldn't the FTC have seen that, or been alerted and acted immediately? There is no legitimate reason, other than the government is a socialist organization that has no incentive to actually get anything done. This is why USPS, VA, Amtrak, etc all suck. Throwing more government at the problem will have the opposite effect: less will get done!

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

> "free market is always good and government is bad" This view seems especially American, but it is also a very liberal view (in the philosophical sense, not the somewhat weird partisan sense). Liberalism reconceives the common good, private property, and freedom dramatically. Whereas traditionally, the state is viewed as steward of the common good (that is its essential function), and private property as something instituted for the sake of the common good, liberalism conceives of private property as primary and the common good as something grudgingly ceded from the private good. Freedom is traditionally understood as the ability to do what one ought (the freedom to be what you are by nature, that is, a human being), but liberalism construes it as the ability to do whatever you please. (It's an odd idea. If I happen to want to gouge my eyes out and cut my arms off for no reason, doing so does not make me free. It makes me less free, because now I am less capable of functioning fully as a human being. I am confined and prevented from doing all sorts of good things. Human nature is the yardstick by which freedom is measured.) What does this all mean? Well, it means government becomes construed as an artificial, even malicious construct that stands in the way of freedom. Certainly corruption exists, but this is not a valid argument against government as such. And besides, without government, something fills the vacuum. The absence of authority isn't freedom, but exposure to power that lacks authority. So, yeah, free markets are good, as long as freedom (and thus the good) is construed in the traditional, not the liberal sense. That means that government, properly understood, is not an obstacle to free markets, but a sine qua non of truly free markets.

stevage 3y ago

No one literally says that.