Tor Forde wrote:
>
> Keith Hudson wrote:
>
>
> >
> > And again, monopolies always fail. The more successful ones are those that
> > persuade governments to enact protective legislation. But protectionism
> > only works for a while, weakens their main purpose and causes them to lose
> > touch with reality and new needs.
>
> Can this statement be called an exaggeration?
> England was built upon monopolies.
[snip]
Somebody gotta help me understand this: Now,
it is my understanding that every capitalist's
objective is to destroy the competition (horizontally
and vertically). This is not only an abstract
fantasy, but something the most successful of them
often do pretty well at succeeding at (Standard
Oil, IBM, Microsoft, etc.). All the "competitors"
on all sides try to manipulate *regulation* in their
favor, with various forms of protectionism and
enforced "open markets" (The Japanese didn't
exactly want Admiral Whateverhisnamewas who
visited Edo in the mid-19th century and explained
to them that they would freely trade with the U.S.,
and I believe the factory system would never have
taken hold in England without police repression
of the workers, enclosure of the commons, etc.).
So I think the model must be that of the fat man
in Monty Python's _The Meaning of Life_: Corporations
eat up as much as they can until they burst (of
course this doesn't seem to happen: they just
keep getting bigger...).
As Prince Genji said: "Nothing lasts forever in this
world where one season changes into another." --
so why should we think that any monopoly won't
run into trouble eventually? The Roman Catholic
Church ran into trouble after ca. 1200 years.
And, in any case, there has never on earth
been a true monopoly -- there's always some
employee pilfering paperclips or something that
escapes the dictatorship of the managementariat.
And, most wonderful of all is how, when trade
is deregulated, we often end up paying *more*
for a worse product (like the current Airline
industry). What *was* so wrong with the AT&T
phone monopoly? At least then government *could*
conceivably oversee what was happening, instead
of all the "competitors" pleading incuplability
due to "competition gives me no choice"?
Somewhere in Das Kapital is the wtory about
how the only way the work day could be
shortened was by *legislation*, since
competition would never allow an employer to
do better for his employees than the rest
(it would -- God save us! -- raise his *costs*!).
It almost makes me agree with the Darwinists
that language is not *meaningful* but only
a way for genes to struggle for dominance, etc.
But of course that is not true: Language is
a key instrument for "winning hearts and minds",
and the prime target of psychological warfare is
always a country's own "people" ("Civilization
and its Discontents"...).
????
\brad mccormick
--
Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but
Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world.
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA
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