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Ronald Reagan: Protectionist

As for GW Bush, we can look back at the impact he's had with his steel duties(something that Clinton refused to implement). Such examples have resulted in raising costs to companies who use those resources, while at the same time protecting the existing producers from competition and taking the market pressure off of them to increase productivity and efficiency of operation.

Most people think that the first explanation they hear is the truth, and don't spend much time analyzing the facts and trying to understand the complexities. As such you've been told that Republicans are free-traders and free market capitalists and that's what you believe.

The truth is far more complicated that that.

Consider this take on Jimmy Carter for instance, who was responsible for deregulating the airline, trucking, railroad, oil and breaking up AT&T. It even notes that Reagan made a deal with the Teamsters to get their votes, promising to halt deregulation of trucking.

The only thing Republicans are good at is taking credit for stuff that goes well, and placing blame when it goes poorly.

Just eliminate voting. It is apparent that voting is a bad idea that *just doesn't work*. I mean the free market can and *should* be allowed to solve all of our governance problems and so we should just auction off our federal, local and state governments to the highest bidders; who will eliminate taxes and replace them with 'users fees'. Though corporate users will get breaks and 'bulk discounts' since they are so important for the economy and preserving freedom.

No more taxes? No more wars? No more eminent domain? No more tariffs? No more pollution? No more inflation? No more licenses? No more doctor shortages? I get to choose my police department, fire department, and school? Instead of preparing for a natural disaster by sending my money to the local, state, and federal governments, I get to decide how my money is spent?

Where do I sign up?

Just eliminate voting. It is apparent that voting is a bad idea that *just doesn't work*. I mean the free market can and *should* be allowed to solve all of our governance problems and so we should just auction off our federal, local and state governments to the highest bidders; who will eliminate taxes and replace them with 'users fees'. Though corporate users will get breaks and 'bulk discounts' since they are so important for the economy and preserving freedom.

No more taxes? No more wars? No more eminent domain? No more tariffs? No more pollution? No more inflation? No more licenses? No more doctor shortages? I get to choose my police department, fire department, and school? Instead of preparing for a natural disaster by sending my money to the local, state, and federal governments, I get to decide how my money is spent?

Where do I sign up?

This is an existing racket which has just been ported to the web.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_ada_shak edown.html
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/artic le.html?storyid=5543
http://blog.mises.org/archives/001453.asp

You might be interested in the following article: Will the University Survive?

It points to several resources regarding podcats and higher education.

* Starting a company to compete with such a beast would take a great deal of money. Money that would be extremely difficult to come by if you can't even send an email to the VC company that may or may not be interested.

Why would it require a great deal of money? You can start small, and expand when you get revenue. The internet wasn't built in a day.

* Attracting customers requires publicity and marketing, two other undertakings that are difficult when you find it difficult to place a phone call.

Word of mouth. Newspaper ads. Instead of placing a phone call, drive to the company you want to use for advertising.

* The One True Telecom would spend billions lobbying, marketing, lying cheating and stealing to freeze you out of every opportunity.

Only marketing would work in a libertarian society. Lying, cheating, fraud and stealing would still be illegal. The purpose of lobbying would be to get the government to regulate, which would cause the society to cease to be libertarian, so lobbying would not be possible in a libertarian society.

A libertarian society would not produce more responsible companies, it would produce more companies.

I don't see how. If I'm missing something, please let me know.

Without regulation, the barrier to entry is lowered considerably, thus resulting in more people creating companies and competing.

How would a lack of regulations keep a monopoly from forming?

The only way a monopoly is formed (in a non-regulated market), is if a company is able to outcompete every other company. This would be the result of having better prices, quality etc. If this company then decided to raise its prices, the market it is operating in becomes more lucrative, resulting in new companies entering the market. If the company didn't raise its prices, then there would be no problem, and eventually technological advancements would allow new companies to enter the market causing new competition to lower prices. I chose my words poorly, as removing regulations doesn't stop monopolies from forming, but makes them less dangerous.

Customers only get alienated if they are told they should be alienated. The consumer is not the driving force in this arena. Consumers do as they are told; poor service or bad behavior on the vendor's part does not drive the market. If this were different, no, these monopolies would not exist. But if things were different they wouldn't be the same.

The reason those monopolies exist is because they were granted exclusive rights through regulation in the past. Even today, the requirement of universal service is a huge barrier of entry to new companies.

I have no problem with libertarianism as an idea or you in particular; I don't know where you got that idea. I'm challenging your argument because there's things about it that I don't think jibe with reality. I would be a libertarian if I thought our society had progressed to the point where its naivete could be overcome. Libertarianism works if everyone (including corporate entities) acts responsibly. Big business (and individuals for that matter) have proven that people cannot be trusted to act responsibility without the threat of sanction. I don't like it either, but I don't think you could argue that that is the case.

Sorry, should have left the part about rage out, and I would have edited it if that was possible. It was meant more at regulatorians at large, and not directed at you specifically.


Here is an interesting read on net neutrality.

Without anti-trust law, what would stop the AT&Ts and the Verizons of the world merging into the One True Telecom company that would control every bit and byte that passed over any network worth talking about?

I realise free market theories are hard to grasp when there are no real-world examples on earth today, but I am worried that the word 'competition' didn't enter your mind. In this hypothetical one-ISP-to-rule-them-all scenario, why couldn't someone start a new company that competed with this monster ISP? I can't think of anything else but government intervention, a.k.a. regulation.

And why would a libertarian society automatically generate companies that would act more responsibly?

A libertarian society would not produce more responsible companies, it would produce more companies. If the market consisted of a lot of small companies instead of one mammoth-monopoly (which is only enabled by regulations), then the individual companies would have far less power. If a company had crappy policies, then it would get alienated from its customers and go bankrupt, which is an important part of a free market.

If any of this made you even blink, then I point you to http://mises.org/. If, OTOH, this only awakens emotions of rage because I'm a stupid libertarian who wants the whole world to be owned by one big corporation that spills toxic waste in your backyard and charges you for it, then I guess that's your problem.

I was speaking sarcastically; I don't actually believe economics to be a religion, of course. The point was that the world cannot be cleanly divided into "science" and "religion" -- not everything not classified as science is necessarily religion, and vice-versa. Nonetheless, the point about not getting involved is just as true if economics is, as you claim, a matter of beliefs without possibility of proof as it would be if economics were truly a religion. How can any interference be justified (or claimed to bring about an improvement) if the outcome of such policies cannot be accurately predicted in advance?

I have a feeling you've never looked into praxeology -- the logical study of human action, and the basis for the Austrian school of economics -- since its theories are both provable and falsifiable, and not based on the beliefs of individuals any more than the validity of mathematics or logic, or the scientific method, are based on such beliefs. Its conclusions are not based purely on "persuasive arguments" but rather on logical deduction from first principles. If you wish to examine these claims, I recommend Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (particularly pages 46-59 on "empiricism-positivism"), and finally either Man, Economy, and State by Murray N. Rothbard or Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (all titles listed in ascending order by my assessment of difficulty and detail).

In any event, you didn't address my second (more important) point: as long as democratic (republican) governments insist on meddling in economics, voters should take it upon themselves to learn something of economics and employ that understanding in choosing their representatives, for themselves and for the other individuals their choices will affect.

I was speaking sarcastically; I don't actually believe economics to be a religion, of course. The point was that the world cannot be cleanly divided into "science" and "religion" -- not everything not classified as science is necessarily religion, and vice-versa. Nonetheless, the point about not getting involved is just as true if economics is, as you claim, a matter of beliefs without possibility of proof as it would be if economics were truly a religion. How can any interference be justified (or claimed to bring about an improvement) if the outcome of such policies cannot be accurately predicted in advance?

I have a feeling you've never looked into praxeology -- the logical study of human action, and the basis for the Austrian school of economics -- since its theories are both provable and falsifiable, and not based on the beliefs of individuals any more than the validity of mathematics or logic, or the scientific method, are based on such beliefs. Its conclusions are not based purely on "persuasive arguments" but rather on logical deduction from first principles. If you wish to examine these claims, I recommend Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (particularly pages 46-59 on "empiricism-positivism"), and finally either Man, Economy, and State by Murray N. Rothbard or Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (all titles listed in ascending order by my assessment of difficulty and detail).

In any event, you didn't address my second (more important) point: as long as democratic (republican) governments insist on meddling in economics, voters should take it upon themselves to learn something of economics and employ that understanding in choosing their representatives, for themselves and for the other individuals their choices will affect.

I was speaking sarcastically; I don't actually believe economics to be a religion, of course. The point was that the world cannot be cleanly divided into "science" and "religion" -- not everything not classified as science is necessarily religion, and vice-versa. Nonetheless, the point about not getting involved is just as true if economics is, as you claim, a matter of beliefs without possibility of proof as it would be if economics were truly a religion. How can any interference be justified (or claimed to bring about an improvement) if the outcome of such policies cannot be accurately predicted in advance?

I have a feeling you've never looked into praxeology -- the logical study of human action, and the basis for the Austrian school of economics -- since its theories are both provable and falsifiable, and not based on the beliefs of individuals any more than the validity of mathematics or logic, or the scientific method, are based on such beliefs. Its conclusions are not based purely on "persuasive arguments" but rather on logical deduction from first principles. If you wish to examine these claims, I recommend Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (particularly pages 46-59 on "empiricism-positivism"), and finally either Man, Economy, and State by Murray N. Rothbard or Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (all titles listed in ascending order by my assessment of difficulty and detail).

In any event, you didn't address my second (more important) point: as long as democratic (republican) governments insist on meddling in economics, voters should take it upon themselves to learn something of economics and employ that understanding in choosing their representatives, for themselves and for the other individuals their choices will affect.

I'm no economist, but they moved off it for a reason. From what I understand, it stifled inflation at the cost of dramatic boom/bust swings. A little constant inflation is better than cyclic depressions.

Sure, that was the theory at the time. However, the repudiation of the Treasury's liabilities (failure to redeem the existing paper receipts in gold as promised), the policy of institutionalized inflation, and theories of "underconsumption" and "hoarding" resulted directly in the Great Depression and have contributed to evey other "business cycle" since. Keynesian economics, the supposed justification for eliminating commodity money, are no longer considered sound even among those "economists" who advocate interventionalism; the only economic theory in existance that has adequitely explained each and every one of the cyclic booms and depressions (which are very recent phenomena to begin with, the major ones dating from the creation of the Federal Reserve) is the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (explained in the book referenced below), which clearly concludes that the "dramatic boom/bust swings" were due to inflation itself; further inflation can only delay the inevitable correction (the depression), making it even more severe. Unfortunately, unwilling to admit that the problem is intervention itself and not just Keynesian policies, and yet unable to come up with any consistent theory to their liking, they have allowed the existing policies to continue rather than admit that the "laisse-faire" proponents were right all along.

An economic/historical analysis of the Great Depression is available for further reference: America's Great Depression, by Murray N. Rothbard.

Nixon's accomplishments included: a) getting the US economy off of the gold standard allowing for the next several decades of unprecedented US global economic domination -- HUGE strategic decision that in hindsight seems simple but took great forward thinking

Are you mad?

Before Nixon, we had the Bretton Woods system, where the dollar was redeemable in gold only to foreign governments and their central banks. The United States pyramided dollars (in paper money and in bank deposits) on top of gold, in which dollars could be redeemed by foreign governments; while all other governments held dollars as their basic reserve and pyramided their currency on top of dollars.

There being plenty of room for inflation before retribution could set in, the United States government embarked on its post-war policy of continual monetary inflation, a policy it has pursued merrily ever since. But as the 1950s and 1960s continued, the purchasing power and hence the true value of dollars fell, and dollars became increasingly unwanted by foreign governments. Europe did have the legal option of redeeming dollars in gold at $35 an ounce, and as the dollar became increasingly overvalued in terms of hard money currencies and gold, European governments began more and more to exercise that option. The gold standard check was coming into use; hence gold flowed steadily out of the U.S. for two decades after the early 1950s, until the U.S. gold stock dwindled over this period from over $20 billion to $9 billion.

On August 15, 1971, at the same time that President Nixon imposed a price-wage freeze in a vain attempt to check bounding inflation, Mr. Nixon also brought the post-war Bretton Woods system to a crashing end. As European Central Banks at last threatened to redeem much of their swollen stock of dollars for gold, President Nixon went totally off gold. For the first time in American history, the dollar was totally fiat, totally without backing in gold.

Since the U.S. went completely off gold in August 1971 and established the Friedmanite fluctuating fiat system in March 1973, the United States and the world have suffered the most intense and most sustained bout of peacetime inflation in the history of the world. It should be clear by now that this is scarcely a coincidence. Before the dollar was cut loose from gold, keynesians and Friedmanites, each in their own way devoted to fiat paper money, confidently predicted that when fiat money was established, the market price of gold would fall promptly to its non-monetary level, then estimated at about $8 an ounce. In their scorn of gold, both groups maintained that it was the mighty dollar that was propping up the price of gold, and not vice versa. Since 1971, the market price of gold has never been below the old fixed price of $35 an ounce, and has almost always been enormously higher. When, during the 1950s and 1960s, economists such as Jacques Rueff were calling for a gold standard at a price of $70 an ounce, the price was considered absurdly high. It is now even more absurdly low. The far higher gold price is an indication of the calamitous deterioration of the dollar since "modern" economists had their way and all gold backing was removed.

If you want to know more, check out Murray N. Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money?.

I was reading the http://www.mises.org/story/1568 ten economic fallacies article the other day, and an eleventh fallacy occured to me:

Intellectual property is indispensible to a free market economy.

The question actually is: what does intellectual property cost our economy, and does the balance accrue in our favor?

First up is the cost of the absolutely overwhelming, inescapable and expensive, Cold War insanity expensive, police state that we are building here and around the world to create a regulated economy for non-existent property. We actually have to monitor what people say, what they watch, what they hear, what they write, where they go, where they point recording devices. Then we have to build the prisons to house all those miscreants, and fund the courts and the lawyers to lock 'em all up. And this criminalization industry adds nothing to the economy (Broken Window fallacy) -- it merely costs.

The next and killer cost is the cost of lost opportunity. Let's take what used to fuel the growth of science: free and open dissemination of information for all to share. This freedom fired the intellectual explosion that gave us calculus and steam engines, an explosion that sadly is being contained by IP firewalls around corporations and universities as they become profit engines. The shrouding of research is slowing science and technology growth by a significant amount. The question is: what could have been learned by now had these new IP lords not restricted the flow of knowledge? This is not covered by cost accounting, which picks and chooses a narrow field of debits and credits that merely cover what profit IP gives the cost accountants, not the civilization as a whole. The advance of science since the Renaissance has been derailed in the last fifty years.

Extending that idea, what could be the profit to the civilization as a whole if every single book, all movies, all magazines, all sound recordings, all designs, were released in a timely fashion, as the Constititution's writers ordained, and inventors and artists could access everything that mankind has ever created, anytime they liked? What new Renaissance is being throttled by the greedy little men who have sold the idea that ideas and visions are not only their private property, subject to packaging and resale like stock, but theirs for all time to come?

What is this new paradigm of eternal ownership of mankind's knowledge in ever more concentrated (read wealthy) hands giving us, as a people, in comparison to what it is denying us?

Are we losing knowledge that could counter global warming?
Breakthroughs in chemistry that could neutralize waste?
Genetic breakthroughs that could cure cancer, diabetes, AIDS?
Breakthroughs in propulsion that could give us space for pennies?
Organic printers that could create infinite amounts of food from garbage?
What books could be written?

Most importantly, what young minds could be sparked if children could sit down at a screen and feed the Elephant's Child, reading and watching and listening to anything and everything that interests them?

As a child, in my city school, there were only a few science fiction books on the shelves. I read "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" and "Time for the Stars" twenty times each or more. When I arrived at high school, I found rows of SF, and "wasted" time reading each and every one. What could I have done, what could I have imagined my life to be, had I access to all that had been written, for free, since the time I could read at the age of eight?

Multiply me by a billion. What have we lost?

I think the definition of the word *was* the point. Since you claim you know what the meaning is, it surprises me the distinction you made in your previous post.

It surprises me that you thought you needed to introduce me to the concept after having read my post. See below.

which isn't at all true in the context of rivalrous goods. Absolutely nothing is lost in the sharing of non-rivalrous goods.

True. But -- and here's the point you completely fucking missed because you're unwilling to entertain the notion that you might be wrong -- which good are we talking about? The enjoyment of the informational content -- which you were probably thinking about when the blood flowed into your dick -- is indeed a non-rivalrous good. And a lot of morons, like this one say that's the end of it -- the information isn't scarce, so there's no basis of rights. If, on the other hand, the relevant good is *that* the information be enjoyed/used, it's no longer non-rivalous. Let me spell it out for you, since before this post the concept didn't even exist in your mind: The artist's (or his agent's) desire to that only those who paid him a cut gain access to his work, and the desire of others to have a copy without paying him a cut for the work, cannot simultaneously be satisfied. That good (literally, the truth of whether people have a copy without payin royalties), is rivalrous. To you, however, it "doesn't count" because you adhere to the arbitrary rule that, "heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn a good is something you can touuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch, man, something you can feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel". Ridiculous -- adoration from one's lover is utterly non-tangible, but a good nonetheless.

Now, I'll accept your apology for the foot-in-mouth "rivalrous" post.

The problem is (imho & based on how I read your other posts) that you've bought into the false notion that intellectual monopoly is required to generate content and cause creativity. But this is clearly false. Humans created long before these artificial barriers to market were introduced, and will continue to innovate long after they've been dropped.

Actually, the *real* problem is that you are incapable of attacking anything save a strawman. I NEVER SAID OR IMPLIED that there would be no innovation/creativity without intellectual property rights. I was very careful to constrain my statements to FOR PROFIT PRODUCTION. You would have noticed that if you had read my posts. (Skimming isn't reading.)

So long as we're clear that the 'they' in this sentence is the recording industry: not the artist.

Oh geez.

You would be correct to say that perhaps they didn't change methods, adapt, etc. as necessary. But to claim that publishers literally contribute nothing? That's false, a result of a simplistic approach to this whole topic. No matter how good your music is, that does NOT guarantee that the people that will turn out to like it, will ever get a chance to hear it. Artists generally cannot marshall the resources necessary to persuade lots of people of the merit of their work, or to get it to the point where they hear it, even if they are very good. This is what the publisher attempts to accomplish. Has new technology changed the specific tasks the publisher has performed? Sure. Have many of the transaction costs decreased? Of course. But your attempt to paint this sharp dividing line between the "real" producers (who are artists) and the leeches who "merely" publish rings hollow. Great post on the matter.

Words of wisdom: a good that consumers are unaware of, is not a good. (I mean a good in the economic sense, not the hippie sense you're familiar with.)

Sure, and the original condition was a bargain between publishers and the public. A 17yr right to be the only

Another remarked that he felt by supporting TPB and facilitating the theft of over 150,000 copyrighted materials he was committing 'civil disobedience'. Could you elaborate?

Can somebody who's seen the film explain whether this fellow is truly practicing civil disobedience, by (for example) informing the authorities (if appropriate) and the media companies that he is pirating their stuff? That is civil disobedience: breaking the law in a spectacularly obvious fashion, getting busted, and drawing attention to yourself. Yes, I know he showed up in the documentary, but was he mentioned by name?

1. Diesel fuel
   
2. Diesel power generator
   
3. Computer, laptop
   
4. Food (could be combined with abouve, there's food in my keyboard)
   
5. Ammo
   

Because we do have copyright laws, we work within them to maximise liberty regardless.

Copyleft is a hack of copyright law towards that purpose. It's very valuable and useful inside that context.

But anyone that things copyright is property needs to go back to square one and figure out what property is again. I highly recommend Ludwig von Mises' Liberty and Property as a good starting point.

Copyright is not property, 'intellectual property' in general is not property. It's privilege, and the antithesis of property. I'll happily give up the GPL the day that 'intellectual property' privilege is gone across the board. Until then, it's a wonderful tool to preserve some sanity inside an insane system.

Much (most?) pollution is not a consequence of inefficiency, and industry has no inherent incentive to reduce it. This is the standard example given to illustrate negative externalities. Government is the only instrument I'm aware of by which people can push these externalized costs back onto the polluters.

I'm guessing dada21 would probably respond with a link to something like the following from the Mises Institute:

Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution

Saw a great article on this just last week.

"the war was fought to preserve the union, and "union" was understood, even then, to be the equal partnership of the several states in a federal system. if you don't like the idea of the "United States", that's fine; work to change us to something else. But don't rewrite or misinterpret history."

History HAS been rewritten by the winners (as they always do). The war was about taxation. at the time there was no federal income tax. The fed got its money through tariffs on imported goods. The South was an agrarian society, and thus exported most of its production. They typically recieved finished goods in payment, which when imported was subject to tariffs.

This book traces the taxation issue.

Before the civil war the tariff was around 20%. In the book above, the author looks at federal revenue leading up to the civil war. The sourthern states paid roughly 85-90% of TOTAL federal receipts, while most federal spending was in the northern states (70%+).

The Republican party was started as a regional (north eastern states) party. One of its primary planks was an increase of tariff rates. Shortly after they republicans took office they increased the tariff on imported goods to 50%.

Thus you have a southern economy already paying the lions share of taxes and getting little benefit, and the northern economy paying few taxes and increasing taxes on the rest. Before the new congress came into office the south saw the handwriting on the wall....

The book mentioned above goes into this in detail, including reproductions of political cartoons of the time. My favorite shows pres buchanan as a poor widow, while a southerner holding a bag of money taken from the federal "safe" is walking out of the house.

Having the thing doesn't give you a right to download a copy. I've yet to see a respected scholar in the field of IP law say anything like that.

BTW, I really appreciated reading your posting history on this subject.

Also, may I please encourage you to look into the economics that I believe people will need to know about in order to survive the shifts in governments that are likely to happen between now and then?

What you're missing is that the Company D would be a riskier investment given what happened to Company A. If it should fail, then Company E will be an even riskier investment. The perceived risk will increase and increase until Company B finally shows signs of real weakness, and successive challengers will have a harder and harder time getting funding. Do you actually have an example of an unregulated monopolist taken down through this successive challenger idea?

The increasing risk part is probably true, an indication that the monopoly is more capable of meeting the needs of the market (should it chose to do so) than any of the previous challengers, which would of course make yet another challenger a bad investment.

As for historical examples, I couldn't find any on short notice. Most of the relevant search terms seems to lead to pages discussing either regulation or the board game, neither of which was very helpful, and most of the discussions of monopoly policies deal strictly in abstract theory (on both sides of the issue). Monopolies overturned through natural causes don't seem to warrent much discussion (though that is no excuse for not locating one, I know). On the other hand, do you actually have an example of an unregulated monopolist that was able to profit from charging a "monopoly price" clearly greater than the ideal "competitive price" for the market? (Rothbard didn't believe that such a distinction exists (Link), and I am inclined to agree with him. How can you tell that a company is imposing a monopoly price, rather than simply adjusting to the new demands of the market? Regulation may lower prices (by shifting costs elsewhere), but this says nothing about what the competitive price would be in the absence of both monopolies and regulation.)

I also can't help but chuckle when I saw your $10M fab. Fabs easily cost billions of dollars.

True, the cost of the fab was completely arbitrary. It doesn't affect the analysis, so feel free to substitute a more believable cost.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly. Rockefeller reduced prices for consumers for years and years and years. Before the government even had a chance to take SO apart, competition did. Check the facts.

Better yet, read up here:

The Gates-Rockefeller Myth:
The efficiencies of economies of scale and vertical integration caused the price of refined petroleum to fall from over 30 cents per gallon in 1869 to 10 cents by 1874, and to 5.9 cents in 1897. During the same period Rockefeller reduced his average costs from 3 cents to 0.29 cents per gallon.

This is bad? How? Because competition was too inept and inefficient to give consumers better prices and more product? Come on, bring some facts to the Standard Oil "monopoly" myth.

We also see here:

Privileged Producers:

The U.S. Supreme Court declared in its 1911 decision breaking up the company: "Much has been said in favor of the objects of the Standard Oil Trust, and what it has accomplished. It may be true that it has improved the quality and cheapened the costs of petroleum and its products to the consumer."

Standard Oil was finally broken apart in 1911. Mary Ruwart wrote a huge section of her book about the facts of the SO situation. In 1900, Standard Oil had a 90% share of the oil market based on being the most efficient and active producer. By 1911, Standard Oil had fallen to 65% because competitors found new oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma and were able to match Standard Oil's efficiencies in production and distribution. The anti-trust case hadn't even been settled by this point -- proof to me that the case wasn't needed.

Before the Standard Oil breakup, they were providing cheap oil to poor and sub-poor people who couldn't afford oil before SO was able to produce it so cheaply.

Every time I bring up examples of how monopolies just don't exist naturally (without government subsidies or preferential treatment), people bring up Standard Oil and only SO. They never bring up any other examples because there are none and the SO example is faulty -- they were not a monopoly, they were just efficient for a few decades.

Standard Oil was not a monopoly. Rockefeller reduced prices for consumers for years and years and years. Before the government even had a chance to take SO apart, competition did. Check the facts.

Better yet, read up here:

The Gates-Rockefeller Myth:
The efficiencies of economies of scale and vertical integration caused the price of refined petroleum to fall from over 30 cents per gallon in 1869 to 10 cents by 1874, and to 5.9 cents in 1897. During the same period Rockefeller reduced his average costs from 3 cents to 0.29 cents per gallon.

This is bad? How? Because competition was too inept and inefficient to give consumers better prices and more product? Come on, bring some facts to the Standard Oil "monopoly" myth.

We also see here:

Privileged Producers:

The U.S. Supreme Court declared in its 1911 decision breaking up the company: "Much has been said in favor of the objects of the Standard Oil Trust, and what it has accomplished. It may be true that it has improved the quality and cheapened the costs of petroleum and its products to the consumer."

Standard Oil was finally broken apart in 1911. Mary Ruwart wrote a huge section of her book about the facts of the SO situation. In 1900, Standard Oil had a 90% share of the oil market based on being the most efficient and active producer. By 1911, Standard Oil had fallen to 65% because competitors found new oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma and were able to match Standard Oil's efficiencies in production and distribution. The anti-trust case hadn't even been settled by this point -- proof to me that the case wasn't needed.

Before the Standard Oil breakup, they were providing cheap oil to poor and sub-poor people who couldn't afford oil before SO was able to produce it so cheaply.

Every time I bring up examples of how monopolies just don't exist naturally (without government subsidies or preferential treatment), people bring up Standard Oil and only SO. They never bring up any other examples because there are none and the SO example is faulty -- they were not a monopoly, they were just efficient for a few decades.

Be [a] man, and just admit that according to your ethic if you want something that's copyrighted it's ok to just take it.

First, I'll assume that by "just take it" you're not refering to actual theft -- involuntary transfer of property from one person to another -- but rather duplication (copyright infringement). A matter of semantics, perhaps, but important nonetheless. Anyway:

According to my ethic, in the absence of a contractual obligation which one has personally agreed to[1a,b] no one else has the right to prevent one from employing one's own labor (or the voluntary labor of another) in transforming one's own materials (or the same voluntarily supplied by another) into the likeness of any physical manifestation of an intentional pattern[3] which one has observed without violating anyone else's property rights[4].

That said, there is a trade-of between exercising one's freedom and not annoying the wrong people, people who can make my life (or yours) very miserable if they should choose to do so (with or without reason). I generally choose not to annoy such people if I can help it; this includes accomodating at least the spirit of copyright law, as misguided as it is. The logical parallel would be choosing not to resist an armed robbery -- it's not that the robbers are in the right, it's that I'd probably lose more than my money should I try to resist.

[1a] There is no other kind of contractual obligation.

[1b] A system of "copyright" could, possibly, be constructed as a network or hierarchy of contracts. Such a system, however, would be far more limited than what we currently know as "copyright", however, affecting only those who chose to agree to follow it.

[3] An engineering design, artistic expression, literary work, etc.

[4] There are no other kinds of rights; "human rights" and "property rights" are precisely equivalent. There are no property rights that are not also human rights, and human rights cannot exist in the absence of property rights. More information. "IP" is not property; "IP" "rights" and physical property rights are mutually exclusive, as they grant exclusive control over the same property to two different "owners".

Thank you for agreeing that trade secrets are bad for competition. True, copyright, licencing and certainly patents prevent competition. Which is why the anti-monopoly laws curb their power when they outlive their purpose. But complete deregulation, as you seem to advocate it, is not the solution, it's complete madness. If you take away copyright, you take away any incentive anyone might have to publish. If you take away patents and licencing in general you take away any incentive to innovate. Government is not evil, it's a huge protection and a necessary burden.

I disagree with you. I've written two books (both becoming free e-books) that I never used copyright to protect my creations. I sold them, and I continue to reap profits from their sale. I maintain about a dozen blogs and websites where I repudiate copyright and allow others to take my words intact and use them as their own. As long as the ideas get out there, my income goes up even if no one knows that I wrote the words. I also use my freely distributed words to reinforce my hourly rate, which goes up each and every year well over inflation's rise.

The blogosphere and F/OSS movement both contradict the idea that people will only create if their works are protected. The garage band and pub band industry also rejects the claim. MOST artists care less about protecting their art as long as they are making an income. No record label would take another artist's works and distribute it as their own -- the label would jeopardize their future if they attempted to defraud the public. The Internet protects the original author's ego more than any other distribution scheme in the past.

What gave MS its edge vs. Digital was the deal with PC makers to buy MSDOS for all their PC's, whether they installed it or not. So if a customer wanted DRDOS he had to pay for MSDOS as well.

So? When I sell my labors, I tell my customers that if they want a discount, they better buy what I recommend. If they don't, my rate doubles. Some customers prefer to go direct, so I charge them a higher rate. Microsoft has EVERY right to contract their stipulations -- PC makers had every right to refuse the contract and sell hardware with opposing operating systems. The consumers decided they wanted Microsoft, not DR-DOS. On top of that, the State's enabling of copyright and patents prevented DR-DOS from legally reverse engineering the MS code to sell a competing product. The State restrained trade, not Microsoft.

Deregulation is what gave California its power outages and England it's shortage of tap water.

Lies. Myth. Completely false. Deregulation NEVER happened in California. In both cases, wholesale costs were partially deregulated, but retail costs were not -- and competition was NEVER allowed into the picture. See this article: The Myth of De-Regulation and this article: The Failure of State-Designed Markets In BOTH cases, government is to blame 100%. Why did only California experience these outages when other states are even more free in energy policy? Corrupt politicians and corrupt public policy.

What you need is not deregulation, it's BALANCED regulation. Protect innovation, production, implementation, commerce, etc. until the players become too rapacious and the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Which why patents have a limited lifespan, btw.

No patent really seems to work, though. Look at cell phones -- almost all of them are nearly identical in how they work, but every phone has a dozen patents pending. None of the patents mean anything to the cartelized players in the game -- they only serve to restrict new players from competing. We'd have a cheaper and higher quality world without patents.

This had nothing to do with the state, it was the deal with the hardware manufacturer(s) (and the fact that the hardware manufacturer had to honour their contract -- are y

Thank you for agreeing that trade secrets are bad for competition. True, copyright, licencing and certainly patents prevent competition. Which is why the anti-monopoly laws curb their power when they outlive their purpose. But complete deregulation, as you seem to advocate it, is not the solution, it's complete madness. If you take away copyright, you take away any incentive anyone might have to publish. If you take away patents and licencing in general you take away any incentive to innovate. Government is not evil, it's a huge protection and a necessary burden.

I disagree with you. I've written two books (both becoming free e-books) that I never used copyright to protect my creations. I sold them, and I continue to reap profits from their sale. I maintain about a dozen blogs and websites where I repudiate copyright and allow others to take my words intact and use them as their own. As long as the ideas get out there, my income goes up even if no one knows that I wrote the words. I also use my freely distributed words to reinforce my hourly rate, which goes up each and every year well over inflation's rise.

The blogosphere and F/OSS movement both contradict the idea that people will only create if their works are protected. The garage band and pub band industry also rejects the claim. MOST artists care less about protecting their art as long as they are making an income. No record label would take another artist's works and distribute it as their own -- the label would jeopardize their future if they attempted to defraud the public. The Internet protects the original author's ego more than any other distribution scheme in the past.

What gave MS its edge vs. Digital was the deal with PC makers to buy MSDOS for all their PC's, whether they installed it or not. So if a customer wanted DRDOS he had to pay for MSDOS as well.

So? When I sell my labors, I tell my customers that if they want a discount, they better buy what I recommend. If they don't, my rate doubles. Some customers prefer to go direct, so I charge them a higher rate. Microsoft has EVERY right to contract their stipulations -- PC makers had every right to refuse the contract and sell hardware with opposing operating systems. The consumers decided they wanted Microsoft, not DR-DOS. On top of that, the State's enabling of copyright and patents prevented DR-DOS from legally reverse engineering the MS code to sell a competing product. The State restrained trade, not Microsoft.

Deregulation is what gave California its power outages and England it's shortage of tap water.

Lies. Myth. Completely false. Deregulation NEVER happened in California. In both cases, wholesale costs were partially deregulated, but retail costs were not -- and competition was NEVER allowed into the picture. See this article: The Myth of De-Regulation and this article: The Failure of State-Designed Markets In BOTH cases, government is to blame 100%. Why did only California experience these outages when other states are even more free in energy policy? Corrupt politicians and corrupt public policy.

What you need is not deregulation, it's BALANCED regulation. Protect innovation, production, implementation, commerce, etc. until the players become too rapacious and the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Which why patents have a limited lifespan, btw.

No patent really seems to work, though. Look at cell phones -- almost all of them are nearly identical in how they work, but every phone has a dozen patents pending. None of the patents mean anything to the cartelized players in the game -- they only serve to restrict new players from competing. We'd have a cheaper and higher quality world without patents.

This had nothing to do with the state, it was the deal with the hardware manufacturer(s) (and the fact that the hardware manufacturer had to honour their contract -- are y

So you think that the individual states have done better in the past?

We did do better -- 1776 to 1865. The dollar was stable for nearly 200 years, the individual states as a whole were very competitive and prosperous, and we were the wealthiest nation in less than 100 years.

The last time the individual states ran things before the national government got involved we had: the worst stock market crash of all time,

Created by the Federal Reserve, my friend. The dollar was stable for almost 200 years until the FEderal Reserve destroyed it. Since 1913 the dollar has lost 96% of its value. How can the poor save, now?

states that would not recognize another state's currency,

Good, currency should be a free market provided product, preferably 100% gold reserves. Read Rothbard's free e-book: What Has government done to our money? to learn more about free market currencies and why we had a Great depression.

race and gender segregation the likes of which you have never seen,

Most of which occured because of the White Supremecist Abe Lincoln and his hatred of the black race. Too much proof there to even begin. Lincoln created the worst segregation which continued up until even the 80s in the south and the north.

and a host of other screw the other guy mentalities. We weren't a country but rather a loose confederation of oligarchy's out to make the most buck they could. Anarchy-Capitalism at its finest.

Competition, growth, a growing country of entrepreneurs and freedom advocates. Slavery was bad EVERYWHERE in the world -- only in the US did it take a war to "end" and the war didn't even end slavery -- the free market of industrialism did. Lincoln hated blacks, he wanted to deport them after the war. He supported the law in Illinois that prevented blacks from entering the state!

Of those who answer yes, how many of you actually paid for it out of your own pockets, up front? Grants, most of which are funded by the government, stafford loans are backed by the government, the majority of the programs you were involved in at any school were funded mostly by the national, not the state, government.

Before government grants, most education was EASILY afforded by people who wanted to go. In fact, there are FEWER people getting value of out college since its liberalization. The Federal government destroyed college affordability through licensing and grants (supply and demand).

Would you really like to see air rates triple because each state now emposes their own air traffic tax that is different from everyone else's? Or how about when you just drive across the boarder to the next state, but oh, since you aren't a citizen of that state you have to pay a toll, it keeps their taxes down you know. Or how about frieght costs quadrupeling because each state has their own driver's licence requirements and now a cdl is something you have to have a certification for in each state you plan on driving through? There is no more FAA because we have cut federal taxes for it, so now the airlines can do whatever the hell they want. Or even worse there are now mini-faa's in each state that do things just slightly differently and to be allowed flight through their airspace the airline has to conform or fly around, taking rates up even further.

Competition means most of these things would exist in a competitive market rather than a federally union-monopolized one. The FAA in Canada was privatized and it is one of the most efficient ones ever -- in fact, it is safer and cheaper than the US' FAA. Freight costs are cheaper to ship from LA to China than from LA to New York (I know, I just started an import/export business). Driver's licenses are another state-created regulation that makes costs higher -- I believe that insurance companies can do a better job of providing driving priviledges in a free competitive market than the DMV or the Feds could offer.

Much of what you're ranting about are problems created BY the state, not fixed by it. More research is available, if you want links.

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Nothing works. Thanks to the Mises Institute for battling all your fallacies of working government:

The FAA Is a failure PDF WARNING
The Government's Highway System
The FCC and telephone tragedies of government
NSF irresponsibility
NAS PDF WARNING
The Trouble with NASA
PTO
USGS failures
NOAA
National Park Service - more
NEA

and as for education, let's look at No Child Left Behind and the Department of Education PDF WARNING.

That enough?

Interesting. I'm not familiar with Standard Oil. I guess my opinion is that we need some legislation to 'keep the free-market free'. What's your opinion on the Microsoft antitrust? Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly? I would think these things would be legitimate in a "totally" free-market, without legislation.

Great questions. Both these questions are very well explained from a free market perspective in the Mises Institute article titled The Gates-Rockefeller Myth. They had an old article titled Priviledged Producer. The other article I like is Anti-trust, anti-truth.

Interesting. I'm not familiar with Standard Oil. I guess my opinion is that we need some legislation to 'keep the free-market free'. What's your opinion on the Microsoft antitrust? Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly? I would think these things would be legitimate in a "totally" free-market, without legislation.

Great questions. Both these questions are very well explained from a free market perspective in the Mises Institute article titled The Gates-Rockefeller Myth. They had an old article titled Priviledged Producer. The other article I like is Anti-trust, anti-truth.

Interesting. I'm not familiar with Standard Oil. I guess my opinion is that we need some legislation to 'keep the free-market free'. What's your opinion on the Microsoft antitrust? Should MS be able to coerce PC sellers to include Windows? Should they be able to deliberately obfuscate APIs and interfaces to thwart other OSs? Should they have been able to engineer IE to render google more slowly? I would think these things would be legitimate in a "totally" free-market, without legislation.

Great questions. Both these questions are very well explained from a free market perspective in the Mises Institute article titled The Gates-Rockefeller Myth. They had an old article titled Priviledged Producer. The other article I like is Anti-trust, anti-truth.

Welcome to the club, either way :) I have a ton of friends who still prefer big-L libertarianism (through legal means) than small-l libertarianism (encompassed by a variety of voting and non-voting ideals). The most recent LP problems are REALLY scary because it seems that some of the paleoconservative and paleoliberal policies of the LP are being usurped by neoconservative and neoliberal thoughts.

Keep a look out at the LRC and at the Mises Institute blog for more updates on the LP issue. I gave up my membership a few years ago when I realized that the LP internal politics prevented anything from moving forward. Only in the past 2 years did I realize that voting is also fraudulent, coercive, and against almost everything that can be labeled as "free" or "pro-liberty."

Copyright is one of those issues that even Mises and the LRC don't agree with me on -- I guess I'm a fringe libertarian.

I'm a vocal anti-copyright advocate and I repeatedly try to get people to realize what most Federal legislation does, especially regulatory legislation: it removes rights from the individual and creates cartelization: legal monopoly. It has happened in every industry that has any form of federal regulation: oil refinery, content distribution, medical licensing, campaign finance rules, even the stock market is cartelized now moreso than every before. Regulation at the national level is unconstitutional regardless of what people think of the non-applicable "interstate commerce clause."

Cartels exist because they have the legal monopoly to do so. Copyright only helps create and empower the cartels -- it has never helped an individual unless that individual was protected by a cartel. If you created a movie and someone wanted to hack it so that more peopl could watch it -- and they paid you for each and every hack -- you'd love it because you are getting income, you're gaining a new audience, and even more profitable: you're learning what people want. DVD players already allow for multiple versions, and maybe companies would start taking advantage of it had it not been for the big cartel that controls the flow of movie productions and releases.

Consider you're that same small movie maker -- if someone copies your movie (with or without hacking it), how would you battle them in court? What money would you use to fight the hacker/pirate/modifier/copyright violator? Is the financial risk of losing in court worth the reward? Definitely not -- more proof that cartelization is always bad.

Stephan Kinsella made a great case as to why intellectual property restrictions are anti-consumer in his free PDF titled Against Intellectual Property. (PDF WARNING) Stephan is a IP lawyer, as well, and has offered dozens of great articles on the problems with IP and how more laws aren't going to support more consumer freedom, better quality products and more competition. When you create federal regulations, you create cartelization. He also has a great non-PDF article from last year titled No such thing as a free patent, which goes beyond copyright but makes very good arguments for why they're all bad. This guy makes his living with the law, amazing that he cries out against it.

While I'm anarcho-capitalistic, I do understand that the Constitution DOES allow regulation of some sort to be created at the state level. This is preferably where regulations "should" be, if at all. The states that over-regulate will see less choice (and higher prices due to decreased supply). The states that don't over-regulate would likely see better choice, safer products and better pricing.

As usual, the federal government oversteps its bounds predictably -- in the direction of cartels. I won't call them "big business" because no real business exists with the help of government. Thankfully the future of the free market is proving to the world that copyright is insignificant to most people: they'll continue to find new ways to distribute all media products "for free," and the producers of content will have to learn the reality of supply and demand: if it is digital, it has a virtually unlimited supply. Put infinity in the supply/demand/price equation and the price will always fall to zero. This means it is time to find new ways to promote value added products along with your content.

I see no reason to enforce "Net Neutrality" through any law, especially since we've seen what happens when the government regulates any action -- less freedom, not more.

The Mises Institute has a great article on why NN is a terrible idea. The article is titled Who Owns the Internet? and it really gives great insight into why the political side of NN is just another fiasco and a tool to control the Internet by those already in power.

Competition will keep the Internet cheap and fast -- not laws. NN will only decrease competitive opportunities, and we all know the law will end up with 5000 pork barrel adders that have nothing to do with the title.