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I didn't actually mention private ownership, only what might be called the right of free assembly. Also, for what it is worth, individual players in the market
by whatshisface 2y ago
I didn't actually mention private ownership, only what might be called the right of free assembly.
Also, for what it is worth, individual players in the market obviously want to become literal kings. They're "capitalists" but not "capitalist ideologists." Capitalist ideologists are people like Milton Friedman, who was not a fan of monopoly and who was himself not much of a businessman.
- HPsquared 2y agoFree assembly is gradually being chipped away in the West.
- whatshisface 2y agoOur rights can't be eroded, only infringed. :-)
- schmidtleonard 2y agoSo they aren't true capitalists? Why does that sound familiar? My contention with the likes of Milton Friedman isn't that he enjoyed monopolies, it's that his policies (and those of capitalists by any definition I have heard put on the field) tend to support and encourage the formation of monopolies. Markets are full of natural anti-competitive forces (again, just ask any investor about moats) and if you don't have a plan to stomp them out, markets just devolve back into the world's 500th mechanism for the people on top to extract rents from the people on the bottom. As a side effect, the monopolies grow into the same bureaucratic monstrosities they claim to be the cure for. Exhibit A: Boeing, per TFA.
- whatshisface 2y agoBoeing is a government-dependent monopoly, and Friedman argued convincingly that pretty much all long-lasting monopolies were too. They achieve regulatory capture and that's that for competition. Also, it was true both times you heard it. Brezhnev had no intention of "building communism." :-)