[Guest]

>>THEY ARE COMING HERE!<<

Probably not from Norway, or Sweden, or Abudhabi, or Switzerland, etc.

Were it not for the fact that I love the country I was born in (Canada), I would long ago have emigrated to Norway. I think they've done a lot correctly there. I wish we could have done it here.

[Guest]

I'm against bank mergers. And a believer in competitive free enterprise has to also believe in trust-busting. Microsoft, for example, should have been broken up.

The Americans, who have a much better history overall of breaking up monopolies than we do, haven't been as effective in recent years. But Canadian politicians and bureaucrats actually *love* monopolies, as long as they're (mostly) domestically owned and submissive with regard to regulation by them. It also helps if they're located in Quebec.

And for the record, I'm against the very concept of corporations. They are a collective to which the law gives the status of a person. As an individualist, I consider that an affront.

[4Canada]

I can't argue with you on those points but I don't think that is where we are headed. And because of that I would rather the people were in charge of not only our government but also our resources and at the moment that is not where we are nor does the future look as though it's going to be getting any better anytime soon.

As an individualist at what point would you stop wanting to get larger? How are you any different than say a corporation as an individual?

---
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzsche

[Patm]

Yes, do hit the library, and read "The Real Terrorist Network". You'll learn that retail terrorists like Bin laden are small fry, amatures at best. The biggest and baddest terrorist in the world is the USA. Millions murdered, tortured, imprisoned, and disappeared. They've gotten sloppy lately though, their most brilliant times were the 70s and 80s, working through SE Asia, South America, and Africa. Of course it also helped to have the communist boogeyman for everyone to keep watching instead of watching themselves.

[Guest]

DIVERSION AT THE LEAST. PROPAGANDA AT THE WORST.

[Ed Deak]

We were in town yesterday on our twice a month shopping trip, so I haven't seen the posting by the usual brave "Anon", questioning my opposition to economic competition.

Because wealth can not be created, only taken, the purpose of monetary competition is to take the most from others.

We're inundated with propaganda on how the purpose of so called "free trade" and "globalization" is to cut costs, yet the costs of all the products we have to buy are rising by the minute. E.g. a grocery item that was priced $1.45 just 2 weeks ago, was $1.85 yesterday. Yes, the price of fuel, which is another daylight robbery, does add to costs, but not .40 cents to a $1.45 item. This list goes on and on every 2 weeks when we shop.

In the first 30 years after WW2 costs and prices went up about 100% under the Keynesian theory and strict government regulations and controls. Since the introduction of the Friedmanite, Chicago School, neoclassical free market economy theory 30 years ago, our living costs went up about 1000 %, at least half of that since the US-Canada FTA and NAFTA, while wages remained stagnant, apart from the tens of millions paid to CEOs and other executives.

This is the result of increased economic competition for the purpose of stealing from the public. Living on a small, fixed income we know our prices and also, for years we have been collecting supermarket checkout receipts, showing the increases.

So, if wages are stagnant, we're inundated with automation, the corporations are receiving huge tax cuts everywhere and also are encouraged to outsource to Asia, leaving millions without living wages here, why are our daily living costs increasing ? Let's have the usual Anonymus platitudes on this subject!

I wrote a paper in 1993 in which I defined genuine competition as " The search for excellence under controlled conditions and the neutral protection of life and property"

I also defined war, crime and monetary competition as :"The forced acquisition of benefits and properties against the owners' will"

It may be surprising to some, brainwashed with competition propagandanda, but people who have steady, regular incomes and their personal safety guaranteed, are healthier and more productive than those who are forced to survive like pigs, fighting each other for scraps at the trough.

On my part, I have been competing in many sports and in business for 35 years, have been nominated to a Canadian sport hall of fame, and survived a few occasions where the guy who pulled the trigger at the wrong time is no longer with us. So, I do have some idea on what competition is, should be and what this present crime wave is doing to the human race.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

[mk]

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<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2062.html">http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fields/2062.html</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/no.html">http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/no.html</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_eco_aid_don_gdp">http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_eco_aid_don_gdp</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.oecd.org/document/15/0,2340,en_2649_37413_33956303_1_1_1_37413,00.html">http://www.oecd.org/document/15/0,2340,en_2649_37413_33956303_1_1_1_37413,00.html</a><br />
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The nerve of these guys, wasting our money, tracking meaningless socialist statistics like that!<br />
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[Spud]

Wouldn't it be nice if we could ban stupidity?!
No neo liberal economics!
Agree with you Ed on prices,everything goes up,yet the costs to the corporations is less.
We are being ripped off.

[DL]

"People who are capable are supporting themselves but choose not to work shouldn't starve, but neither should they prosper."

Granted, there is that balance you speak of. The problem then arises on who defines who is capable, and how capable. Usually I hear Anon posters on hear making disparaging remarks about people on disability pensions etc. Disability payments are not handouts, but rather a product that has been bought and paid for by the person who subsequently takes receipt of his or her purchase. The problem arises in Canada and the US where so many that are capable of contributing, do so, but do not earn a "living wage". I'm not suggesting that fast food employees drive Porches, but if you work full time, transportation, accomodation, food and medical care should not be considered outside your reach.

I think I get Ed's attitude towards competition, you will get your three vendors in the beginning, each whose sole aim and driving force is getting 100% of the pie. When one firm achieves this goal, you get that monopoly you wanted to avoid.

"I've seen how competition produces innovation and stimulates creativity. And I've also seen what happens when governments engineer monopolies. Give me a competitive market anyday."

Let's review how competition and innovation stimulated creativity in the energy sector, and how your above argument for the free hand of the market avoided producing monopolies in that sector in Canada. Does the consumer get those three eager vendors vying for business? Are new and better energy innovations abounding? I guess that's may be part of what Ed has said that it is the nature of competition to reduce competition, so it matters not whether your monopoly is government engineered or compliments of the free hand of the market, the end result is less choice.

"I don't want a level of inequality that suggests the feudal era."

We me either, but it happens nevertheless. I was watching the documentary "Big Sugar", and that was an eye opener. Why should one family live in extreme riches off of the backs of $2.00 a day wage earners in the cane fields of the Dominican Republic. It IS positively feudal that a man can work a 12 hour day in the cane fields and be born and die and accumulate not a single asset. The wage of two dollars doesn't even buy food to feed the worker. So how does the the free hand of the market level this field so that the plantation workers can get a meal and medicine for the family? You'll note he doesn't want the drive the same Porche that the owner of the plantation drive, he just want to eat in return for a 12 hour day. Between this modern slavery and the "welfare state" you live in fear of are the huge glut of the working poor, who do contribute but go without the basics. That's my beef with classical economics.

[aztec]

And according to the documentary "The Corporation", corporations are psychopaths. For the US Supreme Court to proclaim and continue to treat corporations as persons protected by the Bill of Rights by reason of an amendment to the Constitution that was adopted to protect former slaves, is outrageous. Adam Smith abhored corporations and his writings were about indivivual owners; even then he conditioned all his conclusions as only justified if they were in the best interests of the nation. Still he is one of the darlings of the corporate elite. But that's the world we're living in; we're living in a world dominated by multinational corporations.

It seems to me that anyone who believes in meritocracy, must also believe in confiscatory estate taxes. Otherwise it is just nepotism.

If you beleive monopolies have to be controlled then you acknowledge that the government must regulate capitalism for the public good. Then we are just talking about a continuum of how much government regulation is needed to achieve the public good. If you follow the Religious Right, the poor are evil because they are sinners (evil), and the rich are rich because God wants them to be.

In American history, capitalism has always ended in large corporations not only regulating the economic life of the country, but also owning the government until a financial crisis creates the conditions for social upheaval.

---
aztec

[aztec]

And then there are the experts who say the heat from the airplanes could not have weakened the girders to collapse the towere and the witnesses who claiam they heard explosions and saw smoke at the base of the towers. There's also the lack of plane debris at the Pentagon, the lack of a hoge crater at the Pentagon that seems to be the hallmark of plane crashes, the unlikelihood that someone trained in a flight simulator could fly a huge plane five or ten feet off the ground at 500mph, the witnesses who thought it was a missile and the round missile-like hole going through the rings of the Pentagon.

---
aztec

[Guest]

As an individualist, I want the decision of how much bigger I get to be made by myself, the quality of my work and the fortunes of the economy, not a government-imposed ceiling. I believe in progressive taxation, but not some overall cap on wealth.

I'm different from a corporation because I am a singular being with a will and rights. I am not an abstaction. Rights should not be granted to abstractions.

[Guest]

I couldn't agree more. The dismal response to Hurricane Katrina demonstrates that we need every cent we send to the hellhole of graft and corruption that is the UN, waste on foreign aid and a worldwide military presence, and generally piss away on the rest of the world to stay here at home. It's time to get back to our founders' vision of a non-interventionist state not engaged in any entangling alliances. I agree with those outside the US who criticize much of US foreign policy, but I'm sure they'll be the same ones bitching, pissing, and moaning if the US ever did follow the course of non-interventionism and something big happens. I'll be sitting back laughing my ass off.

[Brother Jonathan]

<p>aztec,</p> <blockquote>It seems to me that anyone who believes in meritocracy, must also believe in confiscatory estate taxes. Otherwise it is just nepotism.</blockquote> <p>I disagree. (If personal wealth were public patronage, then I’d agree.) Why should a government be presumed to be the worthiest recipient of my millions*, once I’ve left this vale of tears?</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p>* — millions of Turkish lira, that is</p> <p>---<br>Shatter your ideals upon the rock of Truth.<br />
<br />
— The Divine Symphony, by Inayat Khan<br />

[Guest]

What you have yet to address is that the only alternative to having competition is to let the state choose who does business in a given sector. Invariably, where governments get to make this choice, politicians and bureaucrats bestow the goodies on their cronies, regardless of merit. Competition weeds out the incompetent and complacent.

I disagree with your idea that wealth cannot be created, but even if you are correct, wealth can certainly be misallocated, and resources wasted on useless things or things nobody wants. And utility cannot be boiled down to something scientific, so economics cannot (and should not) be portrayed as a form of science. The most important decision in an economy is what gets produced. And there are two models by which these decisions are made - demand and command.

Central planner types believe that *they* and they alone should decide for everyone what they need, what they should want and what they get. You probably remember a system that worked like that Ed, given your place of origin. Two words - bread lines.

If you're going to let demand drive your economy, then you empower the individual to make choices that are in his own best interest, and businesses compete to meet that demand. But if you stick a bunch of arrogant monopolies in his path (imagine every major business run like Air Canada), his freedom of choice is limited.

How much of the "cost of production" reported in a monopoly is actually applicable to the product. How much is waste due to inefficiency, mismanagement and a lack of incentive to do better? If your profits are guaranteed by the state, and your market a captive one, why worry about productivity and efficient use of labour and raw materials? Why worry about anything? You've got it made, and nobody can threaten your exclusive concession.