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False. Well, there are two kinds of monopolies. The government enforced ones (in the US we have the postal service with a government mandated monopoly that is often flaunted by FedEx/UPS). And then there are natural monopolies and they work in with market forces.

Alan Greenspan does a better job explaning this than I can if you are interested in learning more.

Like all other Americans, in recent years I had assumed that what I read in the papers was true about Iraq gassing its own people. Once the war drums again began beating last November, I decided to read up on the history, and found Iraq denied having used gas against its own people. Furthermore, I heard that a Pentagon investigation at the time had also turned up no hard evidence of Saddam gassing his own people.

[...]

Now I have come across the 1990 Pentagon report, published just prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Its authors are Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The report is 93 pages, but I append here only the passages having to do with the aforementioned issue:

Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East

Excerpt, Chapter 5

U.S. SECURITY AND IRAQI POWER

Introduction. Throughout the war the United States practiced a fairly benign policy toward Iraq. Although initially disapproving of the invasion, Washington came slowly over to the side of Baghdad. Both wanted to restore the status quo ante to the Gulf and to reestablish the relative harmony that prevailed there before Khomeini began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomenini's revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him.

United by a common interest, Iraq and the United States restored diplomatic relations in 1984, and the United States began to actively assist Iraq in ending the fighting. It mounted Operation Staunch, an attempt to stem the flow of arms to Iran. It also increased its purchases of Iraqi oil while cutting back on Iranian oil purchases, and it urged its allies to do likewise. All this had the effect of repairing relations between the two countries, which had been at a very low ebb.

In September 1988, however -- a month after the war had ended -- the State Department abruptly, and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish population. The incident cannot be understood without some background of Iraq's relations with the Kurds. It is beyond the scope of this study to go deeply into this matter; suffice it to say that throughout the war Iraq effectively faced two enemies -- Iran and the elements of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq ann

The Results of "Predatory pricing": Commodity Prices from 1880-1890

During the 1880s output of monopolistic industries grew seven times faster than the overall economy, while prices in these industries were generally falling--even faster than the 7% rate of decline that occurred in the economy as a whole.

Free market economist Milton Friedman states that he initially agreed with the underlying principles of antitrust laws (breaking up monopolies and oligopolies and promoting more competition), but came to the conclusion that they do more harm than good and that therefore they should not exist.

Critics also argue that the empirical evidence shows that "predatory pricing" does not work in practice, and is better defeated by a truly free market than by anti-trust laws.

Thomas Sowell argues that even if a superior business drives out a competitor, it doesn't follow that competition has ended:

Alan Greenspan argues that the very existence of antitrust laws discourages businessmen from being productive for society, out of fear that their business actions will be determined illegal and dismantled by government. In his essay entitled Antitrust, he says: "No one will ever know what new products, processes, machines, and cost-saving mergers failed to come into existence, killed by the Sherman Act before they were born. No one can ever compute the price that all of us have paid for that Act which, by inducing less effective use of capital, has kept our standard of living lower than would otherwise have been possible." [4]

Like all other Americans, in recent years I had assumed that what I read in the papers was true about Iraq gassing its own people. Once the war drums again began beating last November, I decided to read up on the history, and found Iraq denied having used gas against its own people. Furthermore, I heard that a Pentagon investigation at the time had also turned up no hard evidence of Saddam gassing his own people.

[...]

Now I have come across the 1990 Pentagon report, published just prior to the invasion of Kuwait. Its authors are Stephen C. Pelletiere, Douglas V. Johnson II, and Leif R. Rosenberger, of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The report is 93 pages, but I append here only the passages having to do with the aforementioned issue:

Iraqi Power and U.S. Security in the Middle East

Excerpt, Chapter 5

U.S. SECURITY AND IRAQI POWER

Introduction. Throughout the war the United States practiced a fairly benign policy toward Iraq. Although initially disapproving of the invasion, Washington came slowly over to the side of Baghdad. Both wanted to restore the status quo ante to the Gulf and to reestablish the relative harmony that prevailed there before Khomeini began threatening the regional balance of power. Khomenini's revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him.

United by a common interest, Iraq and the United States restored diplomatic relations in 1984, and the United States began to actively assist Iraq in ending the fighting. It mounted Operation Staunch, an attempt to stem the flow of arms to Iran. It also increased its purchases of Iraqi oil while cutting back on Iranian oil purchases, and it urged its allies to do likewise. All this had the effect of repairing relations between the two countries, which had been at a very low ebb.

In September 1988, however -- a month after the war had ended -- the State Department abruptly, and in what many viewed as a sensational manner, condemned Iraq for allegedly using chemicals against its Kurdish population. The incident cannot be understood without some background of Iraq's relations with the Kurds. It is beyond the scope of this study to go deeply into this matter; suffice it to say that throughout the war Iraq effectively faced two enemies -- Iran and the elements of its own Kurdish minority. Significant numbers of the Kurds had launched a revolt against Baghdad and in the process teamed up with Tehran. As soon as the war with Iran ended, Iraq announced its determination to crush the Kurdish insurrection. It sent Republican Guards to the Kurdish area, and in the course of this operation -- according to the U.S. State Department -- gas was used, with the result that numerous Kurdish civilians were killed. The Iraqi government denied that any such gassing had occurred. Nonetheless, Secretary of State Schultz stood by U.S. accusations, and the U.S. Congress, acting on its own, sought to impose economic sanctions on Baghdad as a violator of the Kurds' human rights.

Havin

What you are conveniently forgetting is that the folks who look at the child porn are creating the market for it. Without them, there would be none.

And actually even the claim that Saddam gassed his own people in the 80s has been disputed.

Jude Wanniski (whose website you linked to), is quite alone in denying that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. Slate has a good article that discusses the issue. Besides, several of his claims are clearly false:

To begin with there were never any victims produced.

A quick Google image search for Halabja belies that claim. There are numerous photos of the immediate after-effects of the attack. More recently, there was a study to investigate the long term effects of the chemical exposure. The victims of the attack suffer from high rates of respiratory problems, cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders, and skin and eye problems. Maybe part of the reason he claims victims can't be found is because they're some of the 300,000 bodies discovered in mass graves.

The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The reports of the chemical bombing were not just from Kurds who crossed into Turkey. Some of the pictures linked above were from journalists flown in from Tehran the next day.

Wanniski even mentions the oft repeated myth: that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. According to this article from the Christian Science Monitor, that myth has been debunked by no less than Iraq's former Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz.

It may well have been Iran, and in either case it happened on a battlefield.

It is highly doubtful Iran was behind the attack. In the first place, their troops and allies were the ones attacked (see here). Secondly, there is no evidence of Iranian use of the type of chemicals at Halabja (see here).

In addition, although chemical weapons were used multiple times in the Iran-Iraq war, the reason the Halabja attack sticks out is precisely because it was not a battlefield. At the time, Halabja was a city with a population of about 80,000 which had just recently came under control of Iran and their Kurdish allies. Many of the approximately 5000 victims of that particluar attack were civilians. Most of the published photos were of women and children killed, for the simple reason that news media thrives on sensationalism.

We've managed to kill 100,000 civilians with our advanced "smart" bombs - is it surprising that primitive mortars would kill 5,000?

First, the claim of 100,000 dead is based on an extrapolation from a survey. I'd take the 100,000 figure with a grain of salt until a more extensive survey is done. There is a Slate article that dissects their methodology. A reliable number of civilians deaths reported can be found at the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website. As of Feb 10, 2005, they count less than 18,000 civilians reported killed.

Second, most of the deaths are not from our precision guided munitions, the so-called "smart bombs." In fact, most of them

And actually even the claim that Saddam gassed his own people in the 80s has been disputed.

Jude Wanniski (whose website you linked to), is quite alone in denying that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. Slate has a good article that discusses the issue. Besides, several of his claims are clearly false:

To begin with there were never any victims produced.

A quick Google image search for Halabja belies that claim. There are numerous photos of the immediate after-effects of the attack. More recently, there was a study to investigate the long term effects of the chemical exposure. The victims of the attack suffer from high rates of respiratory problems, cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders, and skin and eye problems. Maybe part of the reason he claims victims can't be found is because they're some of the 300,000 bodies discovered in mass graves.

The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The reports of the chemical bombing were not just from Kurds who crossed into Turkey. Some of the pictures linked above were from journalists flown in from Tehran the next day.

Wanniski even mentions the oft repeated myth: that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. According to this article from the Christian Science Monitor, that myth has been debunked by no less than Iraq's former Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz.

It may well have been Iran, and in either case it happened on a battlefield.

It is highly doubtful Iran was behind the attack. In the first place, their troops and allies were the ones attacked (see here). Secondly, there is no evidence of Iranian use of the type of chemicals at Halabja (see here).

In addition, although chemical weapons were used multiple times in the Iran-Iraq war, the reason the Halabja attack sticks out is precisely because it was not a battlefield. At the time, Halabja was a city with a population of about 80,000 which had just recently came under control of Iran and their Kurdish allies. Many of the approximately 5000 victims of that particluar attack were civilians. Most of the published photos were of women and children killed, for the simple reason that news media thrives on sensationalism.

We've managed to kill 100,000 civilians with our advanced "smart" bombs - is it surprising that primitive mortars would kill 5,000?

First, the claim of 100,000 dead is based on an extrapolation from a survey. I'd take the 100,000 figure with a grain of salt until a more extensive survey is done. There is a Slate article that dissects their methodology. A reliable number of civilians deaths reported can be found at the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website. As of Feb 10, 2005, they count less than 18,000 civilians reported killed.

Second, most of the deaths are not from our precision guided munitions, the so-called "smart bombs." In fact, most of them

And actually even the claim that Saddam gassed his own people in the 80s has been disputed. It may well have been Iran, and in either case it happened on a battlefield. We've managed to kill 100,000 civilians with our advanced "smart" bombs - is it surprising that primitive mortars would kill 5,000?

I oppose anti-trust laws because they violate individuals property rights. An ancilliary reason is that they harm the country's economy and make people less well off / inhibit a rising standard of living. And that is what we are talking about, not your lack of friends to discuss political theory.

If you doubt my statements regarding anti-trust, witness the nation's formost trusted economist giving a long and broad explanation of exactly why here.

1) Microsoft is a natural monopoly. The value of your product gets geometrically higher to have closer to a natural monopoly. To achieve and maintain a natural monopoly is nearly impossible and requires you to offer value BELOW the cost of entry into the market. These natural monopolies have provided tremendous value to the country. The nation's formost economist Alan Greenspan explains this here.

2) Do not confuse a natural monopoly with an unnatural one - IE - the post office, the DMV, etc.

3) The Sherman anti-trust act, as bad as it is, is for the protection of consumers, not competitors. You have to prove demonstrable actual damage to consumers - you can put your comptitors out of business all day long.

This message is sponsored by the letters A, Y, and N.

All I'm saying is that you can't believe everything you see and hear, including what you've just said.

I'm not going to get all political about this, and I'm not going to say one viewpoint is right and one is wrong. What I can say is that I've been involved in some things that have made national news in the UK and the way the footage was cut on the BBC (yes, the supposedly neutral BBC), gave a completely different impression to what actually happened. And this "editing" was no accident either. Events were shown deliberately in the wrong sequence.

And as for the gassing of the Kurds, you do realise that some historians doubt the official account and attribute the atrocity to the Iranians? Here's an example article. Again, I'm not saying which I believe, just that what you're told through the news media is always a distortion to portray the editor's/company's political agenda.

Bob

1) Saddam Husain has used weapons of mass destruction( WMDs) such as nerve gas against Iraqi kurdish civilians.

Um, no. The U.N., though they really tried hard, couldn't find any evidence that Saddam Hussain ever gassed the kurds. This claim is as factual as Dennis and Eric being members of the trenchcoat mafia.

2) He ejected U.N. inspectors who were making sure he complied with the peace terms stating he wouldn't continue to develop WMDs including the Iraqi nuclear program.

Um, actually they have been more than complient with U.N. inspectors. The inspectors left because they couldn't find anything. Since the orginal yahoo link is now DOA I'll include the article in a comment to this comment.

3) He has launched strikes on civilian populations in Israel during the Gulf War even though Israel was not part of the military coalition. He did this in the hopes invoking an Israeli response which would gain him the support of other Arab nations.

And is this somehow worse than the United States using depleated Uranium that causes horrible birth defect to the most innocent or starving everyone through sanctions?

And as a parting thought take a look at Seven Washington Lies about Iraq.

I call FUD

Of course, I can hardly argue against your first hand experience, but what about Falung Gong?
Of course, I can hardly argue against your first hand experience, but what about Branch Davidian's of Waco or Ruby Ridge

Or the China Democratic Party founder Lu Xinhua, who was convicted of subversion [bbc.co.uk] for an article posted on the internet?

Or the U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer & McCarthy jailing Commies(TM)Even better is Bush / Aschcroft Terrorist campaign this is amusing. How about this jailed dissident?

Lastly, I'd like to remember at the incident at the Tiananmen. It maybe more than ten years ago, but the leaders are the same.Lastly, I'd like to remember at the incident at Tulsa. It maybe more than 80 years ago, but the leaders are the same.

Furthermore they stated (in 2001) that its decision back than was correct because it was a "counter-revolutionary turmoil" aimed at overthrowing the administration.

How about the CoIntelPro program during the 60's? And the rest of the past and present domestic and foreign PsyOps and BlackOps programs -- active campaigns to squelch "counter-revolutionary" ideas.

Red Flag is under the control of the China Academy of Sciences, headed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of the president Jiang Zemin

Does nepotism bother you? How about a Senator screwing with the voting in his state to help elect his OWN BROTHER... did I mention that they were both Sons of a former President? Its almost like a father appoints his own children to office...

...The fact is, Islam preaches the Golden Mean - everything in moderation, nothing to excess....

In
this article in the Washington Times, economist Bruce Bartlett notes,

This raises an interesting question. Where does this hatred of capitalism come from? Contrary to popular belief, it does not come from Islam.

Indeed, one could argue that Islam is the most pro-business of all the world's major religions. It is worth remembering that the Prophet Mohammed was a businessman, who engaged in extensive commerce during the years before he devoted himself exclusively to religious affairs in the year 611. Even afterward, Mohammed often made comments and took actions that demonstrated his support for business and the free market.

For example, he forbade the imposition of price controls, saying prices were in God's hands and that he wished to meet God (the same God to whom Christians and Jews pray) without having to answer for some injustice that he might commit in this respect.

Now with the internet, there are already taxes on the seller (income tax, sales tax, incorporation, etc). What is worrying some groups is that the internet provides an alternative mechanism to minimise a consumer tax collected at point of physical sale. This is a particular concern with new taxes such as the forthcoming GST in Australia which wants to include the sale of secondhand goods within the tax base (previously excluded as it was too difficult to calculate an equivalent value in dollar terms). The issue is rather murky (OK downright opaque) as the internet is a half-way network caught between the concept of private intranets (original federation of AARNET servers) and a regulated public carriageway (telcos, radio, ISPs, etc). Hence there are multiple juristictions (not to mention different global standards) and inappropriate legal precedences with favor one party (usually the incumbents).

To answer your question, the Internet will be taxed when the overheads of regulation to curb the excesses (e.g. Spam, fraud, trust systems, etc) shifts the Laffer Curve such that there is a net increase in beneficial economic activity. The most appropriate mechanism is still yet to be determined, it may well be the governments insist that the credit card companies collect a compulsary levy which is refunded through a later rebate, it may be that governments insist that all transactions pass through a public key infrastructure which collects a small fee for each access, it may be that they charge the telcos a network volume fee leaving it up to companies to recover (ie pass on the costs) to the actual consumer. You actually might be surprised at how many "invisible" taxes and charges there are. I haven't seen any authoritive studies but some people speculate that 40-50% of the US GDP flows through the public sphere in some form or another (federal, state, municipal taxes/charges).

Governments naturally want to broaden their tax base to encompass as much economic activity as possible, efffectively to provide "consumer protection" in return for a slice of the action. When this becomes too onerous, you will see the rise of alternative "currencies" for local exchange, use of other intangible non-taxable entiries (frequent flyer points) and the favorite game of controlled multinational corporations for transfer pricing (ie shift high visible costs into tax heavy juristictions while assets are moved into tax havens). The internet has just opened up a huge bottle of worms as now similar practices are available to the individual with some savvy ... can we say offshore gambling joints which have a secondary role as money laundary?.

In short, you can bet your bottom dollar that international governments will move to protect their interests. Currently there is a hands-off policy as, despite the hype, the internet only accounts for a tiny portion of world economic activity. This will change when it starts being at least 10% of all purchases. The only question is in what form it will take and whether the cost is worth the benefits. It is up to all the public interests groups/institutions to carefully scrutinise any proposals to ensure fairness and that any taxes are spent to support the appropriate activity.

LL