As far as I can tell there's only a couple of people here besides me that are against antitrust laws.
At least Dr Paul agrees with me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4gRRk2i-M
Lets let a few companies control everything- like the internet. Oh wait, that's what we have.Originally Posted by Madison320
What kind of suckers allow their their tax $ to be spent on something like a national tech and telecom infrastructure and then watch while a few Googles take over, because the watchers are bent on world hegemony and concentrating on who is running places like Syria and Libya?
Gullible, ignorant suckers, that kind.
Why not let a few companies control the interstate highway system? What could possibly go wrong?
And water- think of the profits if it was monopolized.
Dumbed-down Americans don't even know what "anti-trust" laws are anymore, thanks to the likes of Reagan, Bush and that lying SOS Clinton.
Dr. Paul isn't right about everything, witness a one Jesse Benton
Well , if govt was not involved in business and creating hostile environments for new business I dont think anyone would care about anti trust laws .
Do something Danke
Abolish the Fed, ban fractional reserve banking, legalize competing currencies, & codify secession as a Constitutional Right. The rest takes care of itself. Until then abolishing Anti-Trust is low on my hit list.
Pretty much this.
"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."
Calvin Coolidge
Antitrust laws are one of those things attempting to address a problem endemic to the hierarchical nature of the species. Basically, any system in existence will have some individuals gain a disproportionate amount of power they can use in unethical ways to bend society to their will if that is their desire. Ideally, those individuals that become powerful are animated by noblesse oblige and everyone benefits. More practically, power tends to corrupt those who come to possess it. Simply put, there is no good answer to what is simply a fundamentally human problem.
For that reason, I am decidedly neutral on the subject as a concept. However, given current circumstances, I would love for some trust busting to be done. Obviously that will not happen given how useful massive corporations are to the government and vice versa.
Last edited by BSWPaulsen; 02-25-2021 at 01:42 AM.
Well, the argument would be that the market will correct that fundamentally human problem with a fundamentally human solution. If, for any reason, one finds the company he's buying his products or services from distasteful, it will remove some of the value he gets from that product. If it removes enough, one will seek an alternative.
The ideal solution would be to remove the protections these big companies enjoy from their competitors. Like others have noted, if that was done, you wouldn't need anti-trust laws, because it would never become a problem. Anti-trust laws are a government "solution" to a government-caused problem. When you speak of "power", you must differentiate between the power to do what you want and the power to force others to do what you want. The former kind of power is a not a problem; it's the latter that is harmful and it takes a government to do that. Well, one would say that a powerful individual will always try to influence government to force others to do what he wants... But what if you had a government that was powerless to assist???
That being said, I may be a little less dogmatic on this than some. Like IP law, there are benefits to some limited protections. In our current state, it would be inherently foolish to allow governments to provide protections on one side of the ledger without some sort of check on the other side.
"And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire
Yeah....Rand wrong on red flag laws too. (He actually went along with them for a hot minute after Trump floated them). Here's the deal. Get rid of corporate personhood and you won't need laws to reign in the power of out of control corporations. A corporation is a legally created entity. A legal fiction if you will. As long as that legal monstrosity exists, legal mechanisms to reign them in should also exist.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
What's your basis for thinking that?
Granted, the population of this place, and the views that are held by the majority here, has changed a lot since 2016, partly by way of Trumpers invading, and partly by way of old RP supporters changing their views. And of course even in 2008-2012, Ron Paul drew support from people with diverse views who didn't agree with him on everything. But there are still a significant minority here with strong libertarian leanings.
My guess would be that a third here would be opposed to anti-trust laws.
This proposal is another one that I've noticed seems to be popular here. But this is at least as bad and antithetical to Ron Paul's positions as antitrust laws.
The government shouldn't prop up fractional reserve banking with a lender of last resort and legal tender laws. But it shouldn't ban it either. If two parties voluntarily choose to enter an agreement where one of them deposits their money with the other, who by mutual agreement is only required to keep a fraction of it on hand and is free to loan out the remainder, that's their right, and no third party has any right to intervene and ban that agreed upon arrangement. There are problems with it that the market can handle without the government's help.
The same applies to anti-trust laws.
Last edited by Invisible Man; 02-25-2021 at 08:13 AM.
If everybody understood when then "voluntarily" agreed to put their money in the bank that it wasn't really there...then yeah. But if that is not disclosed there is no real meeting of the minds or contract. And all of this is propped up by the government fiction of corporate personhood. People can come together and pool their capital for joint ventures. Those are called "partnerships." Corporations should not exist. There is nothing libertarian about them.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
I don't imagine there are very many people who are unaware of that. But if there are, then that's on them. It's not like banks are tricking people into thinking that's the case.
And at any rate, if there is a problem of banks doing that, then it doesn't call for outright banning of fractional reserve banking. That fraudulent practice could be dealt with as the fraud that it would be, while parties who choose to engage in nonfraudulent fractional reserve banking arrangements with one another could still be left free to do that.
But again, in the current world, where we have a central bank, this is more of an academic question about what banking could be like in the absence of that central bank as opposed to how it is now.
I disagree with all of this as well.
Corporations as we know them are registered with and regulated by governments. And those government requirements placed on them are anti-libertarian. But corporations in and of themselves are inevitable in a free market, including with corporate personhood and limited liability, and not just government creations. Libertarian policy would permit their existence through contracts that do not include the state as a party.
Compare what you're saying to the institution of marriage (which really, is a very specialized type of corporation where two become one flesh). As far as the government as we know it today is concerned, a marriage only exists when the government recognizes it as such, subject to the government's regulations. But absent any of those state interferences in marriage, and in fact even if no state existed at all, there would still be marriages.
I agree, the banning fractional reserve banking used to be really popular.
Without laws it would just be anarchy.
- Kim KardashianIt's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!
My pronouns are he/him/his
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to TheTexan again."
I would bet you all the money that is supposedly in your bank account that MOST people do not understand how the banking system works or that more money has been lent out then there are deposits. But at any rate, contract law does NOT operate under the assumption that "well most people know this." And if it did that would be wrong. Right after the civil war many freed slaves put the money they earned in the "Freeman's bank" which collapsed 9 years later from risky and speculative investing.
Ummm....that's what I said. I will repeat it. Maybe I should rephrase it. When putting your money in the bank, if the bank is engaged in fractional reserve banking, the bank should disclose that all of the deposits could disappear tomorrow if things went wrong. People put money in banks not to earn interest (the bank interest, if any, is pitiful), but for their money to be "safe" and available when needed. Now since most banks are FDIC insured that's not so much of an issue. Of course the FDIC is "federal" which creates the moral hazard, thanks to the repeal of Glass-Steigal, that banks which are just "safely holding people's money" try to act like investment bankers at the same time, taking risks knowing they'll get bailed out.And at any rate, if there is a problem of banks doing that, then it doesn't call for outright banning of fractional reserve banking. That fraudulent practice could be dealt with as the fraud that it would be, while parties who choose to engage in nonfraudulent fractional reserve banking arrangements with one another could still be left free to do that.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
Thank you. I've been arguing with him about that a few times before and until now you're about the only one who's been on my side on this issue.
There have been a bunch of articles posted at mises.org that address those types of claims over the years. Here's one:
http://libertarianstandard.com/2011/...uble-taxation/
(Edit: I just realized that link wasn't the Mises one. That's where I got to that article from though.)
Is it still "Fractional reserve banking" if the reserve ratio is 0 ?
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monet...reservereq.htm
Even before then, most people assumed that the amount a bank could lend was based on the deposits it held. But nope, that hasn't been true since at least 2008. Banks can lend as much as they want, and the "deposits" to back up the loan were literally created out of thin air.
I guess they figured, what's the point, lets just drop the reserve requirement entirely.
- Kim KardashianIt's all about taking action and not being lazy. So you do the work, whether it's fitness or whatever. It's about getting up, motivating yourself and just doing it.
Donald Trump / Crenshaw 2024!!!!
My pronouns are he/him/his
Protectionist regulation creates harmful centralization within the market. Centralization that occurs by market action itself (without protectionism) is not harmful, it is desirable. So, antitrust laws are either breaking up centralized monopolies implicitly created by the government's own protectionist regulations (correct solution: abolish the protectionism), or it is breaking up businesses that are centralized by unhampered market action; the break-up of such businesses is harmful to the market.
In an unhampered market, if people are mistreated, even by a centralized business / supplier, this creates new demand for a new competitor to enter the market. Even if the centralized business is some kind of Google-like behemoth, that is no matter -- there are plenty of VCs who are capitalized to the gills and just waiting for the opportunity to swoop in and destroy a business of any size that has become complacent and arrogant towards its customers.
People do not need to be forced to do what is in their own interests. This is the logical flaw underlying all statutory law. Statutory law is always either redundant or harmful. It is never helpful because forcing people to do things they don't want to do, or forcing people not to do things they want to do cannot improve social well-being. It is just compulsion and/or prohibition and it reduces humans to cattle. The entire concept of statutory law is inherently hostile to the image of God within man.
Last edited by ClaytonB; 02-25-2021 at 01:00 PM.
Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28
Ron Paul may not be right about everything. But calling him a gullible ignorant sucker is going a bit far, don't you think?Lets let a few companies control everything- like the internet. Oh wait, that's what we have.
What kind of suckers allow their their tax $ to be spent on something like a national tech and telecom infrastructure and then watch while a few Googles take over, because the watchers are bent on world hegemony and concentrating on who is running places like Syria and Libya?
Gullible, ignorant suckers, that kind.
Why not let a few companies control the interstate highway system? What could possibly go wrong?
And water- think of the profits if it was monopolized.
Dumbed-down Americans don't even know what "anti-trust" laws are anymore, thanks to the likes of Reagan, Bush and that lying SOS Clinton.
Dr. Paul isn't right about everything, witness a one Jesse Benton
Nope. Corporations are NOT inevitable. They would NOT exist without government. They are no more inevitable than drug laws. Marriage? Marriage was a religious institution long before we had the governments we have today. Terrible analogy. The libertarian position on marriage is to get government out of marriage. How do you get government out of a government created institution like a corporation? Rhetorical question. You can't. People coming together to pool their resources are called partnerships. Partnerships existed prior to governments. Corporations are not persons. Oh, and Ron Paul agrees with me on this.
See starting at 4:30
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
Ron Paul is also against you on this.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
I am aware of the argument. However, I believe it operates upon a grievous misunderstanding of humanity, hierarchies, and power if it is purported to simply be a self-correcting mechanism that solves all ills. Generally, a free market can be a boon to humanity, but even it is only as good as the people participating. A free market supported by a healthy culture will create a "shining city on a hill". A free market supported by a counterproductive culture will create misery.
The concentration of power can and will occur regardless of the existence of a government due to the species always having members actively trying to concentrate it in their hands. That same concentration of power inevitably creates the capacity to force others to do as you wish both directly and indirectly, and the only variation at that point is in the presence of an axis between noblesse oblige and noblesse malice. Antitrust laws are a reaction to this phenomenon, and I do not share the belief that, absent a government, overcentralizing of resources in the hands of a few will not occur. At best, people opposed to the government can make the argument that it might happen less, but this does not make a convincing argument on account of a lack of data (stateless societies always being overrun by societies with states ruins any chance to test this on any large scale). Returning to my earlier statement, it is a fundamentally human problem that government will or will not exacerbate depending on the situation.The ideal solution would be to remove the protections these big companies enjoy from their competitors. Like others have noted, if that was done, you wouldn't need anti-trust laws, because it would never become a problem. Anti-trust laws are a government "solution" to a government-caused problem. When you speak of "power", you must differentiate between the power to do what you want and the power to force others to do what you want. The former kind of power is a not a problem; it's the latter that is harmful and it takes a government to do that. Well, one would say that a powerful individual will always try to influence government to force others to do what he wants... But what if you had a government that was powerless to assist???
I am of the position that corporations should not exist at all, being an embodiment of the "banality of evil" in a similar vein to governments, but that is born more of a distrust of anything being overcentralized. The more stratified a given hierarchy of humanity grows, the worse those at the bottom are treated. It may be somewhat parochial of me to prefer small businesses for this reason (due to many experiences working for small companies versus large, hiring people to do jobs directly versus when I hire someone to do something and they use someone else and so on), but I also extend this understanding to government as it is another form of hierarchy.That being said, I may be a little less dogmatic on this than some. Like IP law, there are benefits to some limited protections. In our current state, it would be inherently foolish to allow governments to provide protections on one side of the ledger without some sort of check on the other side.
The irony is humanity needs hierarchies to thrive, but at the same time they should be limited in line with the point at which individuals suffer as a result of its existence. The founders understood this with the nature of government, but the scope of this principle extends well beyond governments. For that reason, I support anything that would place a "cap" on the growth of a hierarchy beyond a certain point, whether that be on governments, businesses, or whatever form it chooses to take. Large hierarchies tilt toward tyranny and smaller ones remain sufficiently humanized so that both the individuals and collective have a higher standard of living. Not coincidentally, this is why the existence of a huge middle class creates the healthiest society - stratification is reduced and people are not alienated from those at the top. Theoretically, the 2nd Amendment is also designed to achieve this effect when it comes to dealing with the government, but the passivity of the American people has defanged it (there should have been several "Battle of Athens" at this last election).
Thank you for pursuing this argument. I was not going to bother, but it did need doing.
Corporations are just formalized systems of cooperation and organization. They are like "human machines", that is, machines made out of humans. They are more elaborate than simple forms of cooperation, such as a business partnership. But they have no independent existence from the humans that compose them, any more than you can exist without the cells that make up your body! The meddling of the State hampers and uselessly constrains the types and kinds of corporate arrangements that people would form in the absence of such meddling.
But innovators keep moving forward anyway. The DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) concept from the Ethereum blockchain is an example of a recent innovation in methods of corporate organization. Even if it doesn't work long-run, it's still creative and shows that the suppression of innovation is a silent cost that is imposed on the human population by blockheaded regulators, at unimaginable expense to us. It is easy to prove harm when something that exists is stolen from you, but it is difficult to prove harm when the potential you could have created was stolen. But the loss to social wealth is the same, either way. The costs of all State meddling over all time are staggering beyond imagination.
Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28
Consider this scenario.
A group of people contractually agree to pool their resources for some endeavor, and as part of that agreement they delegate to some board of trustees whom the elect to manage the use of those resources under the name of the organization that they create by way of that contract. This organization can buy and sell property, put its money in a bank account, hire employees, and enter into other contracts as decided by that board, in accordance with the contract these people chose to enter with one another. Included within the kinds of contracts this organization enters with other parties there are stipulations that limit this organization's liability. These people who choose to pool their resources in this way do so without any charter by a state recognizing or creating their organization. They create it themselves.
Is this a corporation or a partnership?
I would argue that such things did exist before the advent of the modern corporation as we know it, albeit perhaps without as much formality (e.g. in ancient voluntary societies such as churches, synagogues, and other such organizations that owned property separate from that of their members). But to acknowledge this would require that the word "corporation" not be defined in such a way that only government-created entities could count by definition. But even if no good examples can be found in antiquity, they surely would exist today even without any state's help or regulations.
A corporations isn't an individual, but it's owned by a group of individuals that have the same rights as any other individuals.
I'm sure Ron Paul would agree.
Do you think we should outlaw corporations since you said they are anti free market?
That is, in fact, a partnership. To be a corporation you have to have a GOVERNMENT charter. Period. End of story. And yes, that's true even for non-profit corporations. You can be a church, for example, and never apply for a 501 c(3). You are tax exempt simply by being a church. But you can't apply for those gubmit grants unless you fill out the paperwork, jump through the hoops and become a corporation. Back to your example. None of the contracts these hypothetical individuals draw up can REALLY limit their liability the way a corporation can. The issue with liability isn't just with the people you contract with. It's with people you DON'T contract with! With contracts you can create something called a "limited partnership." But even with a limited partnership, at least one partner always has FULL liability. Let's say persons A, B, C and D form a limited partnership. By contract they can say "Persons B, C and D don't have liability if the partnership gets sued." But person A still has the FULL liability. I learned about all of this when I was a teenager. My aunt and I went to one of those "Start your own business" con-job "we'll sell you a business for $19.95 a month" seminars. The business we decided to buy was one where they would daily fax you a list of distressed and returned merchandise that you could sell. (Yes this was pre-internet). I started reading about corporate structures. I thought a corporation was too complicated and didn't like the idea of double taxation so I looked into limited partnerships. What I was really looking for was an LLC, but those didn't exist at the time. (We ultimately quit the business because. Yeah you would get faxes of stuff you could sell....but without a store to sell the stuff...and pre the internet where you could put up an e-commerce store...it just didn't make sense.)
Now, consider the LLC part of the equation. Once again that is something that you have to apply to a GOVERNMENT to start. It just can't be done by "contract." With an LLC or an S-Corp or any other corporate structure, if the driver for your company crashes into a Rolls Royce some full partner in your partnership is personally liable. So when the partnership runs out of assets, the unlimited partners assets become attachable. Yes you can have insurance, but insurance has limits. Sure the unlimited partner can declare bankruptcy, but that affects his PERSONAL credit. By contrast, if the LLC goes bankrupt, everybody in the LLC can walk away clean thanks to the GOVERNMENT CREATED benefit that simply cannot be created through contract. Even if you contract with ALL of your customers and EVERY institution that loans you money and say "You can't come after my personal assets", that doesn't protect you from liability from third parties that don't contract with you.
What is the ultimate benefit of this GOVERNMENT protection? Well...corporations can take risks that individuals, or even groups of individuals (partnerships) would never dare take. And that's WHY they can grow so big. Further they can be owned by investors all around the world who don't give a rip what they do in the countries where they operate. Some GOVERNMENTS are the biggest shareholders in the world.
But thank you for asking the question. I think that helps to clear up the confusion.
It's not just a question of owning property separate from its members. It's a question of can all the members pass through profits from the corporate endeavor without incurring risk? Churches, synagogues and other such organizations don't do that. Even the ones that run businesses don't do that. When you put your money in the offering plate you are not expecting a return on your investment. Treasures in heaven yeah...but no periodic divided and you can'tI would argue that such things did exist before the advent of the modern corporation as we know it, albeit perhaps without as much formality (e.g. in ancient voluntary societies such as churches, synagogues, and other such organizations that owned property separate from that of their members). But to acknowledge this would require that the word "corporation" not be defined in such a way that only government-created entities could count by definition. But even if no good examples can be found in antiquity, they surely would exist today even without any state's help or regulations.
9/11 Thermate experiments
Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I
"I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"
"We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul
"It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
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