Category Archives: Business

EU Government Is A Monopoly, Not Google

Business, Capitalism, Economy, EU, Europe

The economic sluggards of Europe don’t much like competition; it’s too much like hard work. Competition means that a business has to please the only real boss: a picky customer with many options. Google has raised the ire of the European competition and its proxy, the European Parliament, which “overwhelmingly backed a motion urging antitrust regulators to break up Google.”

“Google’s dominance,” writes Jörg Brunsmann for DW, “didn’t arise from the company employing unfair measures to push its competitors out of the market. It’s become a market leader because of its innovation.”

Put more precisely: Google has arrived at its market share by pleasing search-engine users.

I was part of a worthy group of Austrian economists who published “The Microsoft Corporation In Collision With Antitrust Law,” in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies (Winter 2001, Vol. 26, No. 1.). In section (4) for which I was responsible (“Economic Freedom, Monopoly and the Government,”), I wrote:

Antitrust legislation considers a large market share or a concentration in the market to signify both monopoly and predatory practices on the part of a company. As such, the antitrust chimera is based on discredited theories about competition. Relying as it does on a model of ideal or perfect rather than rivalrous competition, the legislation aims at a market neatly carved among competitors (32).

The principle applies to Google.

In Austrian economics, moreover, a large market share does not a monopoly make. “The only true monopolies are government monopolies. A company is a monopoly only when it can forcibly prohibit competitors from entering the market, a feat only ever made possible by state edict. In a truly free market, competition makes monopoly impossible.” (From “Media Concentration Is Not A Threat to Free Expression, Government Is.”)

Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals

Business, Capitalism, Celebrity, Ethics, GUNS, Human Accomplishment, Judaism & Jews, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

“Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Make sure it doesn’t happen in your state next,” warns Michelle Malkin, in “Rocky Mountain Heist,” a documentary in which the columnist puts her trademark shoe-leather journalistic sleuthing to work in exposing the Democrat-rigged “democracy” of Colorado. There, a group of well-heeled liberals used its power—and “every scheme possible”—to transform Colorado into a playground for the rich (and their liberal ideology) and a nightmare for “common” Coloradans.

Malkin, who once resided in our state, might already know that the dice are loaded against decent people in Washington, too. Take I-594, a gun-control measure which, we are led to believe, expresses the legislative will—even though it is, as The Zelman Partisans have noted, “the anti-gunners’ dream. Under the pretense of being ‘only’ a universal background check bill (common sense, you know!), it will criminalize nearly all transfers of firearms, including the most essential, innocent and fleeting. Loan a gun to a friend in need? Felony. Instructor hands a gun to student and student hands it back? Two felonies.”

The measure was “bankrolled by billionaires on the left,” among them former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Microsoft billionaires Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and, of course, Bill Gates. These busybodies—who reside in fortified castles and are cosseted by security details—raised millions and gave unstintingly to make it harder for ordinary folks to defend life and property.

It runs in the family. In 2011, we were menaced by another unfathomably wealthy “man,” who got behind an effort to bilk Washington-State businessmen and women of more modest means. The Service Employees International Union (state and national locals), the National Education Association, and Washington teachers union locals all united to champion a new income tax. The poster boy for this regressive measure was William H. Gates Sr., father of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The late Steve Jobs was not the only man who had no time for that excuse of a man, Bill Gates. Less well-known for his contempt for the patronizing Gates was hedge-fund founder Robert W. Wilson.

Having donated an estimated $600 million over his lifetime, Mr. Wilson was one of the most generous philanthropists in our country. Still, Wilson flatly refused to join what he derisively termed Bill Gates’ “worthless Giving-Pledge” charity.

And it was not only Gates’ showy, sanctimonious, very public giving that Mr. Wilson discounted.

But first—and against this background—let me add the following: The righteous give discreetly; the pious give publicly. Accustomed to the hedonism of Hollywood and the exhibitionism of cable news anchors, it may surprise some to learn that the manner in which most ordinary Americans give—anonymously—satisfies the exacting standards of righteousness specified by Maimonides. The 12th-century Jewish philosopher stipulated that the highest form of charity is practiced when “donor and recipient are unknown to each other.” …

… Read the rest. “Your Life; A Playground For Rich Liberals” is now on WND.

NASA And The Neocon National Greatness Agenda

Business, Free Markets, Neoconservatism, Republicans, Technology, The State

Hungry to sustain the National Greatness agenda, Republicans, who pose as the party of free-market capitalism, were furious when Barack Obama and his posse privatized aspects in the operation of NASA, the National Aeronautic Space Administration. Duly, neoconservative statist Chucky Krauthammer recently linked the so-called erosion of NASA under Obama to the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash. That’s what happens when you trust this kind of national greatness enterprise to the private sector is what Krauthammer seemed to be saying.

How many disasters has NASA (which, incidentally, has always been a private-public collaboration) weathered? Many. Which NASA official has been as devastated as Virgin founder Richard Branson, as quick to take responsibility for the failures, or as resolute about rectifying these?

Branson’s career in business has been spectacular. The test pilots, astronauts and scientists who work for him know the risks. They’ll get it done. The incentives to succeed are tremendous. Angelina Jolie and her brood will get to levitate above the earth more so than they already do, soon and safely.

Can’t Appreciate The Private Economy? You Don’t Deserve The Plenty It Provides

Business, Free Markets, Government, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

If you fail to distinguish the blessings of the private economy from the curse of government—you deserve none of the former and all of the latter.

Like all liberals (and that includes most “conservatives”), Ron Fournier of National Journal is foolish enough to lump business with government as an eternal source of disappointment to Americans:

Steadily, over the past four decades, the nation has lost faith in virtually every American institution: banks, schools, colleges, charities, unions, police departments, organized religion, big businesses, small businesses and, of course, politics and government.

This is the dross one has come to expect from the Moron Media.

As I type, I consume a plate of 7 different fruits topped with nuts. Many of the ingredients on my plate are organic. Those used to be exorbitantly priced; out of reach. But as demand for organic, locally grown produce grew, production increased and prices fell.

Every day I say my thanks to the businessmen who bring such abundance to market, against all odds, and I curse the government that makes it so hard for them to provide such plenty.

There is nothing in my home that comes courtesy of the blessings of bureaucrats. I guarantee that it’s the same in your home.

If you, like Fournier, don’t know whence come your blessings—necessities and creature comforts—you don’t deserve them.