IP: A "free market" is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE TO a "competitive market."

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 20:52:19 -0700
> To: jwarren () well com
> From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
> Subject: fwd FYI: re Gillmor's April Fool's column in the SJ Merky News
>
> This afternoon, I sent a variation of this to Dan -- who's a friend -- as 
> an informal rant supporting his column ... and he asked if he could post 
> it in his web-pages at the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS.
>
> So I polished the prose a bit (and revised typos), and sent him this.  :-)
>
> --jim
>
>
> > Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 20:37:51 -0700
> > To: "Gillmor, Dan" <DGillmor () sjmercury com>
> > From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
> > Subject: re your April Fool's column (POST IT IF YOU WISH :-)
> >
> >  >>http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/gillmor01.htm
> >
> > For a moment there, I was wondering who was writing under your byline. <grin>
> >
> > Tho'ts related to your laudable Fool's Day rant: As we see the results of 
> > unfettered "free markets" (with freedom limited to those with greatest 
> > power), some things are becoming more and more clear --
> >
> > A "free market" is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE TO a "competitive market."
> >
> > A FREE market facilitates -- encourages! -- monopolies, trusts, cartels, 
> > big fish devouring little fish, and those with great power purchasing 
> > government for themselves.  Perhaps most importantly, a "free market" 
> > demolishes jobs for the sake of profits, and encourages sky-rocketing 
> > prices on essentials, in ways that are possible ONLY when the powerful 
> > are "free" to do so.
> >
> > A COMPETITIVE market -- that aggressively PROHIBITS "free market" trusts, 
> > cartels and monopolistic practices -- facilitates real and *continuing* 
> > competition, and that encourages productive innovation. Real, ongoing 
> > competition provides reasonable profits, minimizes consumer costs and 
> > limits inflation-for-profit.
> >
> > It's "inefficiency" produces more jobs and more employment alternatives 
> > and choices, because there are more companies (required for competition), 
> > and helps hold up employee salaries -- to hire and hold the talents 
> > needed to remain competitive.
> >
> > Results of ongoing *competitive* -- rather than "free" -- markets:
> >
> > *  Consumers get better prices, more choices and a continuation of both;
> > *  Workers have more choices of employers and more competition in 
> > compensation;
> > *  The nation has greater employment through the "inefficiency" of 
> > multiple companies, in place of the "inhuman" efficiency of a monopoly or 
> > cartel;
> > *  Wealth is less concentrated in the hands of a few (and fewer and fewer);
> > *  Individuals and competing corporations have less ability to purchase 
> > special government benefits for themselves at the expense of the majority.
> >
> > Unfortunately, it requires government to actually and effectively 
> > *protect* its citizens against the rapacious forces of a "free" market, 
> > where individual citizens and small groups on their own, are unable to 
> > defend themselves -- which ain't easy.
> >
> > But then again, isn't that among the foremost purposes of government -- 
> > "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the 
> > common *defense* [and] promote the general welfare"?!
> >
> > Those protections were written for, "We the people," which at the time, 
> > did NOT include corporations.  But a half-century later, a group of 
> > distinctly UNnotable, pro-business post-Civil War Supreme Court Justices 
> > suddenly declared -- without debate and without rationale -- that 
> > corporations were "persons" with equal constitutional rights ... and 
> > things have gone downhill ever since.
> >
> > Incidentally, this rant applies equally to Big Labor as to Big Biz!
> >
> > --jim-the-left-leaning-contentedly-backsliding-libertarian  :-)
> > [Not hobbled by consistency.]



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