[Eran]

You have few choices other than those companies in the graphic I posted when it comes to where you get your food, and the price goes up if you want healthier food produced sustainably or organically.

The wonderful graphics already contains at least 10 different parent companies which aggressively compete with each other. This is already vastly more choice than you have in picking your provider of government services. (Even if you believe in democracy, your effective choice is limited to two "brands").

You have, of course, much more choice than that, with generic supermarket brands, farmers' markets, local- and no-brand products, etc.

As for health, the cheapest as well as healthiest food is fresh fruits and vegetables. People eat unhealthy food because it is convenient and tasty. Not because it is cheap.

But even that is not enough. WHY are those the companies that dominate our food provision? Because they are doing a great job satisfying consumer demand. If those companies started jacking their prices (why don't they?), competitors will quickly emerge and take advantage of the opportunity.

Many colliers resided in company towns, in which all land, real estate, and amenities were owned by the mine operator, and which were expressly designed to inculcate loyalty and squelch dissent.

Why did those colliers reside in company towns? Were they kidnapped and kept in chains, or did they choose to go there because the company offered an opportunity better than anything else they had available?

Is there any evidence of fraud against the colliers (i.e. the company misrepresented the terms of employment to get people to move)?

There is nothing that keeps the same thing from occurring today except our ability to prevent monopolization and combination through the tool of government.

But this is what is happening today - who do you think owns and runs our neighbourhoods? Monopoly government. Government already controls our lives, setting rules enforced by "brutal thugs with machine guns and rifles". The only difference is that while the company built the town, and had to tempt workers to come and live there (and workers could leave if they wanted to), government took over property that other people built, leaving people with no option short of living the whole country.

It's an opposition to unjust and undemocratic authority.

Everybody opposes "unjust authority". Anarchists oppose any government (or, equivalently, view every government, including democratic ones, as unjust).

Capital, justly acquired, represents the only form of just authority.

[grassroots1]

The wonderful graphics already contains at least 10 different parent companies which aggressively compete with each other. This is already vastly more choice than you have in picking your provider of government services. (Even if you believe in democracy, your effective choice is limited to two "brands").

It's a flawed analogy for one, and for two I wouldn't go so far as to call America-brand "democracy" democracy.

As for health, the cheapest as well as healthiest food is fresh fruits and vegetables. People eat unhealthy food because it is convenient and tasty. Not because it is cheap.

That is not true, cost is absolutely a factor in determining what food you will buy. Non-nutritious fruits and vegetables produced on a monoculture using fertilizers and pesticides will be significantly cheaper than the organic, no-pesticide counterpart. That's a simple fact.

WHY are those the companies that dominate our food provision? Because they are doing a great job satisfying consumer demand. If those companies started jacking their prices (why don't they?), competitors will quickly emerge and take advantage of the opportunity.

A company succeeds initially because it provides a product that people desire. When 10 companies own the vast majority of production of consumer products in this society (and these companies are without a doubt interconnected further through investment), then they have power by virtue of that position. They can price competitors out of the market, they can abuse their lofty market position. This is a fact of existence in capitalism, the existence of an oligopoly or a monopoly is not a reflection of the positive impact that entity is having on society, it is a reflection only of its own position. It maintains its position by virtue of its position.

Why did those colliers reside in company towns? Were they kidnapped and kept in chains, or did they choose to go there because the company offered an opportunity better than anything else they had available?

It makes no difference. The fact is that when they entered into this "mutually beneficial exchange," they and their children were brutally exploited. You expect people to lose limbs, destroy their physical health, receive no compensation, and then suck it up because both sides of the exchange were "voluntary." Needless to say, I disagree with this assessment...

And some were kept against their will, or in constant debt, because the company was able to wield its power over those workers. They were the only source of the worker's livelihood, and therefore they exploited that position and exploited the workers.

But this is what is happening today - who do you think owns and runs our neighbourhoods? Monopoly government.

The government owns very little of my neighborhood.

Government already controls our lives, setting rules enforced by "brutal thugs with machine guns and rifles". The only difference is that while the company built the town, and had to tempt workers to come and live there (and workers could leave if they wanted to), government took over property that other people built, leaving people with no option short of living the whole country.

I'm not denying that our government is a tool of the business and financial elite, because it is, but I also don't see our current government as the only possible form it can take. If what you call the "brutal thugs with machine guns and rifles" are responding to legislation reached through a genuinely democratic process, then I have no qualms that force will be used against some who want to hoard their wealth at the expense of everyone else. I have no problem with that. Our only means of life should not be to become a wage slave to an exploitative, impersonal multinational corporation and then attempt to brutally claw our way up the capitalist ladder. The immense concentration of resources is not only immoral, it's completely inefficient. If we want a healthy and educated nation, we cannot rely on the free market alone to provide those things, as the history of this nation proves.

Capital, justly acquired, represents the only form of just authority.

I believe democracy represents the only form of just authority.

[mikema63]

It's a flawed analogy for one, and for two I wouldn't go so far as to call America-brand "democracy" democracy.

you seem to suggest that representative democracy is your preferred system so i dont think your for direct democracy, perhaps there is a country that you hold as a model or perhaps a theoretical system you could go into.

That is not true, cost is absolutely a factor in determining what food you will buy. Non-nutritious fruits and vegetables produced on a monoculture using fertilizers and pesticides will be significantly cheaper than the organic, no-pesticide counterpart. That's a simple fact.

non-nutritious fruits and vegtables? cost is most certainly a factor no one doubts that but non-organic foods aren't non-nutritious.

Organic food: Is it more nutritious?

The answer isn't yet clear. A recent study examined the past 50 years' worth of scientific articles about the nutrient content of organic and conventional foods. The researchers concluded that organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs are comparable in their nutrient content. Research in this area is ongoing.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/organic-food/NU00255/NSECTIONGROUP=2

this is from the mayo clinic, and i also remember an interview from stossel where an organic food exec said that their foods were just as nutritious and when pressed would not claim they were more nutritious.

the fact is that both organic and non organic produce needs to be cleaned before use, non-organic has higher trace chemicals but organic has higher levels of bacteria. (see organic fertilizer)

They can price competitors out of the market, they can abuse their lofty market position. This is a fact of existence in capitalism, the existence of an oligopoly or a monopoly is not a reflection of the positive impact that entity is having on society, it is a reflection only of its own position. It maintains its position by virtue of its position.

what parts of my statements on how monopolies and trusts cannot hold their positions without government support and how predatory pricing doesn't work do you disagree with?

It makes no difference. The fact is that when they entered into this "mutually beneficial exchange," they and their children were brutally exploited. You expect people to lose limbs, destroy their physical health, receive no compensation, and then suck it up because both sides of the exchange were "voluntary." Needless to say, I disagree with this assessment...

most of the exploitation sounds clearly wrong and the massacre is most certainly murder by why does this require anything less than a class action suit by the workers (i am fairly sure their contracts don't include the byline of mutilation). i dont expect them to suck it up because the company had no right to do this, coercive force is wrong in libertarian theory and would be subject to legal action, it doesn't really refute the position.

And some were kept against their will, or in constant debt, because the company was able to wield its power over those workers. They were the only source of the worker's livelihood, and therefore they exploited that position and exploited the workers.

contracts are considered void if a participant is held against their will, also i think you should know that a contract that stipulates that you cannot leave the contract is illegitimate, you cannot be contracted into what is essentially slavery. they exploited the workers because they had the government to protect them until unions became more of a political force, under a libertarian situation the company would be under legal trouble.

The government owns very little of my neighborhood.

they do however completely control your property, what you do with it is little more than what they allow you to do. if you do not truly control your property then how can you be said to completely own it?

I'm not denying that our government is a tool of the business and financial elite, because it is, but I also don't see our current government as the only possible form it can take. If what you call the "brutal thugs with machine guns and rifles" are responding to legislation reached through a genuinely democratic process, then I have no qualms that force will be used against some who want to hoard their wealth at the expense of everyone else. I have no problem with that.

im fairly sure you dont completely believe that whatever decision the majority comes to will be right or just. needles to say i think your wrong about it being at the expense of everyone else, but what about decisions the majority comes to that are unjust?

Our only means of life should not be to become a wage slave to an exploitative, impersonal multinational corporation and then attempt to brutally claw our way up the capitalist ladder. The immense concentration of resources is not only immoral, it's completely inefficient. If we want a healthy and educated nation, we cannot rely on the free market alone to provide those things, as the history of this nation proves.

while i think wage slavery is an overused term i dont think there would be as much wage labor in absence of government, more so today than ever before. government makes larger more bureaucratic organizations more efficient, economies of scale are different in different industries of course but it is possible for a company to become to big to be profitable, but when there is a government then big companies have the advantage of creating legal barriers to entry and more general regulations which disproportionately burden smaller businesses that lack Washington contacts. nowadays with the internet small companies and individuals have flexibility that is a very big advantage over large firms and technology has developed to the point that you can buy a printer to make your dishes with, large firms are dinosaurs that stay alive due to their Washington power much more than any economies of scale they might have or once have had.

I believe democracy represents the only form of just authority.

in the end it become slavery of the minority to the majority in my opinion.

[Rei Murasame]

It seems this topic has run off without me.

I've seen the responses that are directed at me, but I'll wait until after Grassroots gives his next response, before I decide what to say. This thread is actually pretty good.

[grassroots1]

Well I'm probably going to wait until tomorrow to respond because all I have is an iPhone and I want to do mike's (and eran's, if he posts) posts justice. Hard to formulate coherent thoughts on this thing.

[Eran]

That is not true, cost is absolutely a factor in determining what food you will buy. Non-nutritious fruits and vegetables produced on a monoculture using fertilizers and pesticides will be significantly cheaper than the organic, no-pesticide counterpart. That's a simple fact.

Setting aside the question of organic vs. industrially-produced vegetables, there is no doubt that even industrial vegetables are much better for you than what most Americans eat. Lower-class people eat fast and processed food which is tastier, more convenient, less healthy and more expensive than industrially-produced vegetables. That's their choice, but the choice is dominated by taste and convenience, rather than cost.

When 10 companies own the vast majority of production of consumer products in this society (and these companies are without a doubt interconnected further through investment), then they have power by virtue of that position. They can price competitors out of the market, they can abuse their lofty market position. This is a fact of existence in capitalism, the existence of an oligopoly or a monopoly is not a reflection of the positive impact that entity is having on society, it is a reflection only of its own position. It maintains its position by virtue of its position.

That is totally false. It can most easily be seen by considering the turnover in corporate America. If what you are writing is correct, how come we see so much turnover, with companies routinely being reduced from position of dominance to bankruptcy or irrelevance, while others emerge all the time?

Regulatory capture and other government hurdles make competition more difficult, with the more regulated areas (e.g. pharmaceuticals, food, finance) being more affected. Thus you see more of that turnover in more lightly-regulated markets such as high-tech, fashion and retail.

"Pricing your competitor out of the market" simply doesn't work. Large companies may enjoy economies of scale, utilising more efficient production techniques. That is a good thing, as they tend to pass the savings in the form of lower prices. But dis-economies of scale set in as well, giving advantage to smaller, younger, nimbler, more innovative competitors. This is a fact of existence in capitalism.

The fact is that when they entered into this "mutually beneficial exchange," they and their children were brutally exploited. You expect people to lose limbs, destroy their physical health, receive no compensation, and then suck it up because both sides of the exchange were "voluntary."

Yet most people view the fact that democratic government was elected voluntarily by the electorate as providing a reasonable measure of security against exploitation and abuse...

Your view either treats the workers as totally stupid, or else the company wouldn't have managed to fool thousands of people over years. As is normal with lefties, you have very low opinion of the people you claim to care about.

The government owns very little of my neighborhood.

Who owns the streets in your neighbourhood?

If what you call the "brutal thugs with machine guns and rifles" are responding to legislation reached through a genuinely democratic process, then I have no qualms that force will be used against some who want to hoard their wealth at the expense of everyone else.

Let's examine your consistency. Here you claim that use of force can be justified when a majority of the population agreed to it through the democratic process. Under those circumstances, force can justly be used even against the minority.

Yet earlier you claimed that force used by the company is not legitimate even though each and every person to which the force was applied has agreed to be subject to that force.

Do you see the inconsistency?

Our only means of life should not be to become a wage slave to an exploitative, impersonal multinational corporation and then attempt to brutally claw our way up the capitalist ladder.

What are the alternatives? You can work for government, which means your wages are ultimately coming from taxes impose on those who are either "wage slaves" or else "claw their way up the capitalist ladder". You can live off government handout, with exactly the same point being applicable.

Otherwise, you are either self-employed or work for a wage. There are no other options. If you work for a wage, you are free to choose whom you would work for, avoiding exploitative, impersonal multinational corporations (which, in aggregate, still employ a minority of workers). You can work for smaller, local companies. They abound in both service and manufacturing. Or you can work for yourself, assuming you have a skill others are willing to pay for, without "clawing your way up the ladder". Merely being content in providing good service to others.

What is your preference?

I believe democracy represents the only form of just authority.

Let me highlight the contradiction again. If democracy is a form of just authority, the majority can justly force the minority to obey their rules. The authority of a democratic government comes from the consent of the governed, yet extends even to the minority who have not consented.

The authority of the company in company towns, on the other hand, applies only to those who personally chose to subject themselves to that authority. How does it make sense that I can legitimately be subjected to authority selected by a majority of which I am not part, but not to an authority selected by me personally?

[grassroots1]

Mike:

you seem to suggest that representative democracy is your preferred system so i dont think your for direct democracy, perhaps there is a country that you hold as a model or perhaps a theoretical system you could go into.

I think the two-party system in America is undemocratic and I would like to see a process where third parties are a more viable option. I think this would limit the ability of politicians to abuse the "lesser evil" mindset that many voters have, and therefore it would create a more democratic system.

As for foods,

• Sustainable farms produce foods without excessive use of pesticides and other hazardous chemical inputs. Research indicates that sustainable foods are often healthier than industrially produced foods.

• Organic foods contain higher levels of antioxidants, which help fight certain types of cancer.i

• Organic crops contain significantly more vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus.ii



• Industrial crops contain more nitrates. iv

• Heavy use of pesticides is associated with elevated cancer risks. iii

http://www.greenpeacecorps.org/Sustainable_vs_Ind.html

As for nutrition,

Early results of a 12 million pound, 4-year EU study on the benefits of organic food suggest that some of them, such as fruit, vegetables and milk, are more nutritious than non-organically produced food and may contain higher concentrations of cancer fighting and heart beneficial antioxidants.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/86972.php

And our friend Zenno's personal account...

That is very plausible if you have the experience. When I bought our farm 15 years ago, the soil was so depleted by conventional farming that a cauliflower didn’t grow to more than the size of a Ping-Pong ball. Even when adding fertilizers, it wouldn’t grow to much more than a pound or so in weight. Growing food in depleted soil by nitrate fertilizers means that even if the plant grows it cannot take up the nutrients from the soil it would in fertile soil. The food is deficient in nutrients just like the soil is deficient; in other words, there is an imbalance in nutrients. The more you eat, the more that imbalance will increase until you get ill. With cows eating grass from depleted farmland, that is known as bloating. The more they eat, the greater the deficiency.

But to get back to yield, today I can grow cauliflowers between 2 to 4 pounds in weight without fertilizers because I have improved the soil by sustainable farming methods. My food grows completely natural with all the natural nutrients contained in natural food. I have been growing most of our food for over 10 years, but when my wife wants to try a recipe with an ingredient that isn’t in season, we sometimes buy something from the shops. The difference in taste is remarkable. Our own vegetables are far superior to the nitrate fertilizer bloated products of industrial farming. A green pepper bought from the shops will start rotting in less than a week, my own green pepper keep for 3 months without rotting.

http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=138821&start=20

I'm not sure of this, but it seems logical to me that overuse of fertilizers does deplete the nutrients in the soil and therefore does translate into a different crop...

what parts of my statements on how monopolies and trusts cannot hold their positions without government support and how predatory pricing doesn't work do you disagree with?

I disagree with the very idea that monopolies cannot be held without government support. If you agree that the natural tendency of the system is toward combination and consolidation due to economies of scale, then you must also agree that cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies could and do exist naturally as a result of the natural direction of capitalism. Whether these monopolies last for a long period of time, whether they are replaced by smaller competitors, is irrelevant because the general trend is in the upward direction.

Government in the past has been responsible for breaking up trusts and monopolies as well as supporting existing businesses. Government does not necessarily do any one thing, it is a reflection of the pressure groups that are acting on it. If the oil industry is heavily lobbying the government then the government's actions will reflect this. If people demand that the government break up a monopoly then the government will do that as well. But above all business will continue to conslidate and combine because that is its natural tendency. So yes of course monopolies can exist without government help, why do you think government has had to break up trusts in the past? Government assisting those monopolies is a product of those monopolies' influence, not the other way around.

why does this require anything less than a class action suit by the workers

Historically judges and juries have been bought and paid for, along with the government, by powerful business entities. This is one way they maintain their position by virtue of their position.

In the spirit of May 1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair#Legal_proceedings

coercive force is wrong in libertarian theory and would be subject to legal action

According to libertarian logic, the workers were trespassing and engaging in force by preventing strikebreakers from going to work, and therefore it was a legitimate action by the government to forcibly remove them from the property. The fact that women and children died in the process, the fact that the conditions they were protesting were abysmal, is irrelevant according to libertarian logic.

contracts are considered void if a participant is held against their will

They were kept in perpetual debt, not physically forced to stay. Your friend Eran seems to think that the miners entered into the contract of their own accord and therefore any abuse they suffer at the hands of their boss is their own fault and their own responsibility.

they do however completely control your property

No they don't, I control my property. They tax my property, they technically have the authority to take my property, but that doesn't change the fact that in the time being I am free to do what I want with my property so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others.

im fairly sure you dont completely believe that whatever decision the majority comes to will be right or just. needles to say i think your wrong about it being at the expense of everyone else, but what about decisions the majority comes to that are unjust?

I would oppose them and work to change them to the best of my ability through collective action. That is, after all, possible in a free and democratic system.

Eran:

Lower-class people eat fast and processed food which is tastier, more convenient, less healthy and more expensive than industrially-produced vegetables. That's their choice, but the choice is dominated by taste and convenience, rather than cost.

I don't deny that people make bad choices, but cost is absolutely a factor in this case. If someone lives on the street they can't buy a bag of rice and raw vegetables because where will they cook it? This is part of the reason (along with lobbying, no doubt) that food stamps are now accepted at fast food restaurants. I find this disgusting but it really is the only place that some people can eat.

When 10 companies own the vast majority of production of consumer products in this society (and these companies are without a doubt interconnected further through investment), then they have power by virtue of that position.

That is totally false. It can most easily be seen by considering the turnover in corporate America. If what you are writing is correct, how come we see so much turnover, with companies routinely being reduced from position of dominance to bankruptcy or irrelevance, while others emerge all the time?

Regulatory capture and other government hurdles make competition more difficult, with the more regulated areas (e.g. pharmaceuticals, food, finance) being more affected. Thus you see more of that turnover in more lightly-regulated markets such as high-tech, fashion and retail.

"Pricing your competitor out of the market" simply doesn't work. Large companies may enjoy economies of scale, utilising more efficient production techniques. That is a good thing, as they tend to pass the savings in the form of lower prices. But dis-economies of scale set in as well, giving advantage to smaller, younger, nimbler, more innovative competitors. This is a fact of existence in capitalism.

I just posted a passage detailing Rockefeller's successful attempts to monopolize the oil industry in America for a period of time. Did Rockefeller not have power by virtue of his position? Of course he did. When you are a large company you can use your resources to lobby, to bribe, to buy out, to price out, to expand your control, etc.

It is true that these companies are not all-powerful, but there is one group that suffers regardless of the number of firms: unskilled labor. That is because there is an imbalance in negotiating power between the plentiful group of unskilled laborers who require work to support themselves (and perhaps their family), and companies who have all the choice in the world when it comes to who they will hire. If you are an unskilled laborer you lose out because the pressure on their wages is inevitably downward.

Yet most people view the fact that democratic government was elected voluntarily by the electorate as providing a reasonable measure of security against exploitation and abuse...

Your view either treats the workers as totally stupid, or else the company wouldn't have managed to fool thousands of people over years. As is normal with lefties, you have very low opinion of the people you claim to care about.

You think these coal colliers knew that they would die of black lung and lose limbs, or be kept in perpetual debt slavery? You think I'm being contemptuous by pointing out that this was an exploitative relationship? That is quite a mental feat Eran.

Who owns the streets in your neighbourhood?

Private individuals own the majority of the property in my neighborhood, not the government.

I am perfectly happy that my government owns roads and I think if we were to privatize them we would very quickly see a decrease in quality.

Let's examine your consistency. Here you claim that use of force can be justified when a majority of the population agreed to it through the democratic process. Under those circumstances, force can justly be used even against the minority.

Yet earlier you claimed that force used by the company is not legitimate even though each and every person to which the force was applied has agreed to be subject to that force.

Do you see the inconsistency?

No because the workers had little choice except to be subjected to that force. They had to make a living. The company who owns the means of production and the means to obtain a decent standard of living holds power over these individuals, which subsequently leads to their exploitation. If they are then kept it debt, they are even more unable to rectify their own situation, and they are essentially slaves.

What are the alternatives? You can work for government, which means your wages are ultimately coming from taxes impose on those who are either "wage slaves" or else "claw their way up the capitalist ladder". You can live off government handout, with exactly the same point being applicable.

Otherwise, you are either self-employed or work for a wage. There are no other options. If you work for a wage, you are free to choose whom you would work for, avoiding exploitative, impersonal multinational corporations (which, in aggregate, still employ a minority of workers). You can work for smaller, local companies. They abound in both service and manufacturing. Or you can work for yourself, assuming you have a skill others are willing to pay for, without "clawing your way up the ladder". Merely being content in providing good service to others.

What is your preference?

I don't think there necessarily is an alternative but what I would like to see is something along the lines of what we have today, but superior still. That is, people should have access to basic education and health care, they should have a place to live and should have access to clean water and nutritious food. If that comes about through taxation on the richest in this society, then that is what should happen. What I do not want to see is people going without education, without health care, being exploited by a company that could not care less about their well-being. If we understand ourselves as a community then we should have certain standards: people need to be healthy, educated, well-fed, housed. That is how we can determine our quality as a people, not by how much "wealth" the people at the top are creating through savage exploitation of the rest of us.

Let me highlight the contradiction again. [1.]If democracy is a form of just authority, the majority can justly force the minority to obey their rules.[2.] The authority of a democratic government comes from the consent of the governed, yet extends even to the minority who have not consented.

[3.]The authority of the company in company towns, on the other hand, applies only to those who personally chose to subject themselves to that authority. [4.]How does it make sense that I can legitimately be subjected to authority selected by a majority of which I am not part, but not to an authority selected by me personally?

1. Yes.

2. Yes.

3. At a certain point it becomes an exploitative relationship. This abuse of colliers in company towns by bosses led to the creation of the Western Federation of Miners, who fought for a superior quality of life against those bosses. This does not signify a people who are consenting to the way they are being treated, and who have chosen the quality of life that is being given to them. It signifies and proves the existence of an exploitative relationship between the employer and employed. They chose to work at the mine. They did not choose to be abused, neglected, and cheated out of a decent way of life by a boss who is exploiting their need for employment.

4. The colliers themselves did not submit to the authority they supposedly voluntarily subjected themselves to in a "mutually beneficial exchange."

The problem here is that if what you was to come to pass, what we would see is steady consolidation and therefore increasingly vicious exploitation of working people. You don't seem to mind this, because you apparently believe that anyone who is employed has consented to whatever abuse the company desires to hand down to them, whether it's debt peonage or an unlivable wage. What you desire spells disaster for the general quality of life of humanity as well as our ability to survive on the long term in the environment of Earth. Collective decision-making has allowed for that basic quality of life, environmental standards, workplace safety, etc. in spite of business, and business has pushed back hard against that trend. Business will continue to make every effort to see exactly what you desire because in that context, there is no limit to which labor can be exploited or the environment destroyed.

[mikema63]

If you agree that the natural tendency of the system is toward combination and consolidation due to economies of scale

ah an area of disagreement, economies of scale do not continue forever, they are balanced by diseconomies of scale, large beurocratic companies are at a great disadvantage with smaller companies, they have less flexibility, technology also drives the economies of scale down as well. the greatest economies of scale in mass production are reduced by technology that makes smaller scales cheaper and thus personalization more desirable making a smaller more specialized and personalizing firm more profitable. regulations cause large firms to be more profitable.

Whether these monopolies last for a long period of time, whether they are replaced by smaller competitors, is irrelevant because the general trend is in the upward direction.

the point is that the smaller firms are more profitable, the general trend in a free market is downward, the trend is only upward when the size of government, and its body of accompanying regulations, are on an upward trend. technology is constantly driving the profitable size of companies lower.

Government assisting those monopolies is a product of those monopolies' influence, not the other way around.

companies will always win, people have interest in all areas of government and must influence them all and can never keep up with any regulatory agency or its rules, companies however have very concentrated interests and need only make friends with one agency. companies have the upper hand, always.

as for foods im afraid i cant really take a greenpeace article seriously, the other is interesting but other studies have not found it so. we must take the jury to be out i suppose.

According to libertarian logic, the workers were trespassing and engaging in force by preventing strikebreakers from going to work, and therefore it was a legitimate action by the government to forcibly remove them from the property. The fact that women and children died in the process, the fact that the conditions they were protesting were abysmal, is irrelevant according to libertarian logic.

true picketing is coercive (though a strike is not) the fact that women and children died in the process is most certainly not irrelevant, picketing is hardly murder and that certainly weighs in on the situation.

They were kept in perpetual debt, not physically forced to stay. Your friend Eran seems to think that the miners entered into the contract of their own accord and therefore any abuse they suffer at the hands of their boss is their own fault and their own responsibility.

i admit to knowing little about this particular situation so im not in a position to stake out a position.

No they don't, I control my property. They tax my property, they technically have the authority to take my property, but that doesn't change the fact that in the time being I am free to do what I want with my property so long as it doesn't violate the rights of others.

or the dictates of the zoning committee, and so long as they dont bulldoze it for a shopping mall.

[grassroots1]

ah an area of disagreement, economies of scale do not continue forever, they are balanced by diseconomies of scale, large beurocratic companies are at a great disadvantage with smaller companies, they have less flexibility, technology also drives the economies of scale down as well. the greatest economies of scale in mass production are reduced by technology that makes smaller scales cheaper and thus personalization more desirable making a smaller more specialized and personalizing firm more profitable. regulations cause large firms to be more profitable.

...

the point is that the smaller firms are more profitable, the general trend in a free market is downward, the trend is only upward when the size of government, and its body of accompanying regulations, are on an upward trend. technology is constantly driving the profitable size of companies lower.

Wealth simply begets wealth. If you have money you have opportunities to make money and make more money than anyone else. We are not talking about individual firms here, we are talking about a general trend. There are individual failures and companies with bloated management and such, but the ability of people to make money is dependent on their having it in the first place. This extends as far as the Congolese person who can barely find enough food to sustain themselves, and as high as the companies like Wal-Mart that can put competitors out of business with just their regular prices. This situation where so few own so much hasn't happened in spite of capitalism, it's happened because of it.

companies will always win, people have interest in all areas of government and must influence them all and can never keep up with any regulatory agency or its rules, companies however have very concentrated interests and need only make friends with one agency. companies have the upper hand, always.

I don't think this has to be the case to the extent that it is today. Politicians are able to manipulate the fact that they can receive votes just because they are the democratic or republican candidate. The extent to which lobbyists are allowed to be involved in our political process is absurd. Government should be representative of the people, not of specific business interests that gave them campaign donations. I can't believe there are so few politicians out there without any sense of public service. But I still haven't given up faith in our ability to collectively make decisions about our future.

What you are suggesting, that we should give up our world to the chaotic fluctuations of the market system, spells destruction of the world that we share. If we can properly regulate our growth then we can continue to survive on this planet for generations. But giving it to the market is like throwing it to the wolf pack.

That's all, I can't bear the rest. "Picketing is coercive."