Wdtabor wrote:

Absolutely. But true, l-f capitalism must inevitably produce economic
colossi that can suppress competition and freedom.

That's what has happened and is currently happening in pretty much every
industry in this country right now.

Think so?

Please point to an example of such a concentration of power in this country
where government has not been used to suppress competition in some way or there
has been unlawful coercion in the marketplace.

Microsoft is the best example. They create new products, and use their marketing
power and money to try and drive competitors out of business, Netscape being just
one of many examples of that there are even some examples where they have failed
because their marketing wasn't enough to over come the worthless product they put
together when the competition in this case had a far superior product. They have
told computer resellers that if they ship any computers with a competitors product
pre installed then they will force that reseller to pay a much higher price for
Microsoft products. In one case Microsoft had some kind of agreement with computer
resellers where they had to put windows on all computers, that way those who want
to run other operating systems still had to pay for windows, this in commonly
refereed to as the Microsoft tax. While the government is involved and has
pretended to do something about it, in reality they have done nothing.

Then there is the music industry where a few very large corporations control
everything and everyone from the DJs to song writers to artists to which songs on a
new CD they are going to let us hear. In this case the government is helping them
make it even worse, by taking our rights that the copyright laws give us.

I'm not trying to suggest that if libertarians were in charge that it would be any
better or worse, just that it is pretty bad the way it is now.


--
Chris W

"They that can give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of Pennsylvania