Fundamentally, free-market capitalism breaks at the monopoly stage. Competing companies fighting for market share provides consumers with at least some form of options. It also provides a space for innovation, which helps to keep companies providing new value at a competitive price.

The problem comes when somebody “wins” the fight. Imagine for a moment that one group was allowed to buy out all of the cell phone companies and all of the cellphone towers in the US. (Let’s ignore the fact that US taxpayers funded part of these) So now you have one cell phone company with no mandate to lower prices or really increase service any more than the minimum. They own all of the towers, all of the infrastructure and all of the customers.

This is a monopoly.

Now how is this good for you?

If you want cell service you pay what they charge and that’s it. Can’t afford it? You can’t go anywhere else. Think you can make a better network? Good luck building the required towers and not losing money in the process.

Look, there’s an upside to monopolies, but that’s when the public owns the services. In many ways we “own” public transportation and waste disposal and law enforcement. But that’s b/c we figured these services were really essential and that it was cheaper to implement these things on our own.

We didn’t see a lot of benefit to having a price war on garbage disposal or buses (heck we wanted to run “unprofitable” buses to help certain segments). So we just let “the city” run these services b/c it’s the easiest way to proceed.

But in a Capitalist setup, the “monopoly” is the breaking point of the whole system. When companies compete, consumers generally win, when a company “wins” the competition, consumers generally lose.

Yes, it’s ironic that any company that “wins” is immediately forced back into battle, but it’s the only way the system works.

I wish i had time to freaky elaborate why, in case anyone does not know….

That doesn’t mean that cable monopolies are good, that just means that they’re allowed because of economic realities.

Microsoft provides developers free tools to make programs and games without any restriction. It provides office software that has been used to write thousands of novels and research papers.

Get some proper perspective before you make outlandish claims.

Rand’s whole point was that selfishness was good because it allowed rich people to flourish (genetically) and weeded out the poor; she was fundamentally an elitist. She also had a piss-poor understanding of economics; selfishness contradicts the trust and information-dispersal foundations upon which capitalism is built.

IOW…if you quote Rand, you are an anarchist, not a capitalist.

People will fear them, but they will not treat us poorly!

All hail Google.

http://www.eskibirsaat.com