Category Archives: Capitalism

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.

The Hateful Eric Holder

Barack Obama, Capitalism, Crime, Race, Racism

While he’s a legal positivist, a militarist, and loves Lincoln for every unpardonable crime Honest Abe ever committed—Mark Levin offers good commentary on a good many issues. Unlike the rest on radio, he’s smart. Today he nailed Eric Holder, who had rushed to Ferguson, Missouri, to racialize the shooting of Michael Brown, but who has said nothing on the murder of a string of white girls by, allegedly, one Jesse Matthew, a black man. Likewise, Obama is mum about “cops and soldiers coming under attack,” but wouldn’t shut up about his personal affinity for Trayvon Martin.

Admirable too is Levin’s ongoing offensive against establishment Republicans, Chris Cristie of late, and the “Chamber of Crony Capitalism,” whose business it is to collude with government to obtain corporate welfare and subsidies (amnesty) and undermine free-market capitalism. “They use the nomenclature of liberty,” says Levin, to bamboozle.

More on Mark:

“Secession, Not Convention, Offers Salvation”

“Conned About Marriage, Constitution And ‘States’ Rights'”

“Levin Claims Liberty’s Language”

“Natural Law Vs. The War Powers Resolution”

Wal-Mart’s Good For The Health

Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Labor

To ameliorate the effects of the Obamacare wrecking ball, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., is venturing into the business of providing primary health care. For $40, the price of a copay (mine are way more), “you can walk into a Wal-Mart clinic and see a doctor.” It’s “just $4 for Walmart U.S. employees and family members.”

Sandra Fluke: You can have a pregnancy test at Wal-Mart for … $3.00.

Via MarketWatch:

On Friday, a Walmart Care Clinic opened in Dalton, Ga., six months after Walmart U.S., the retailer’s biggest unit, entered the business of providing primary health care. It now operates a dozen clinics in rural Texas, South Carolina and Georgia and has increased its target for openings this year to 17. A … cholesterol test [will cost] $8. A typical retail clinic offers acute care only. But a Walmart Care Clinic also treats chronic conditions such as diabetes. (Walmart U.S. also leases space in its stores to 94 clinics owned by others that set their own pricing.)
“It was very important to us that we establish a retail price in the health-care industry because price leadership matters to us,” said Jennifer LaPerre, a Walmart U.S. senior director responsible for health and wellness, in an interview.

Let the anti-Wal Mart jousting begin.

Typically, critics of Wal Mart—for example, Marian Kester Coombs, writing for The American Conservative—will do nothing to trace the mysterious mechanism by which Wal-Mart is said to impoverish. By offering “the lowest possible prices all the time, not just during sales”? What precisely is the economic process that accounts for Wal-Mart’s ability to “expel jobs and technology from our own country”? Competition? Offering a product people choose to buy?

“Protecting the home market,” which is what TAC writer advocates, is to the detriment of consumers. It forces them to subsidize less efficient local industries, making them the poorer for it. To keep inefficient industries in the lap of luxury, hundreds of others are doomed to shrink or go under.

The writer aforementioned also froths at the mouth over “the teenage girl in Bangladesh … forced to sew pocket flaps onto 120 pairs of pants per hour for 13 cents per hour.” It sounds dreadful. However, the economic reality is this: Wal-Mart is either offering higher, the same or lower wages than the wages workers were earning before its arrival in Bangladesh. The company would find it hard to attract workers if it was paying less, or the same as other companies. Ergo, Wal-Mart is a benefactor that pays the kind of wage unavailable prior to its arrival. More material, if the entrepreneur were forced to pay workers in excess of their productivity, he would eventually have to disinvest. What will the Bangladeshi teenage girl do when that happens?