Not sure if this article has been brought out here yet, or not, either way, I’ll go ahead and toss it out and wait for you guys to tear it to shreds:
the guy has a plethora of articles; I’d love for each to be addressed, but it’s one of those cases of “minutes to write and organize claims, days to debunk them”.
the guy has a plethora of articles; I’d love for each to be addressed, but it’s one of those cases of “minutes to write and organize claims, days to debunk them”.
Yeah, I agree. I read the summary and don’t think I’ll bother exposing my brain to more of that drivel. On the other hand, if that is an extremely influential website, it might be worth debunking. But it just looks like some random stupid liberal. Not worth it.
believe it or not, despite its simplicity, it’s quite popular amongst liberals to link to, to supposedly debunk a lot of things libertarians claim (ie: gun control is bad, austrian economics is the only meaningful ecomics, social contracts don’t exist, etc).
Darn! Well, even so, I don’t think those type of liberals would be swayed very much by libertarian counter-arguments, even if they were comprehensive and perfectly infallible. Maybe it would be worth it go through the articles and point out all the blatant lies. Then at least, the liberals might realize that the site lacks academic integrity and scholarship.
lol i wouldn’t worry about it
But this is true. With government enforcing the cartels, they monopolized these industries.
I don’t know what they think a monopoly is, but a monopoly is supposed to charge monopoly prices. They can’t explain why kerosene’s price fell by 9/10 under rock, even if he was a douchebag.
Well, those guys didn’t have true monopolies, and they did reduce prices and all that free-market stuff because they were good entrepreneurs and businessmen. But once they got super-rich, they gained huge influence over government and had legislation passed to reduce competition and keep them on top.
This is not “another” because it is not new.
Thanks.
So capitalism works okay untill you get the government involved 
Stupid liberal:
The height of monopoly growth and abuse in the U.S. coincided with its greatest period of laissez-faire, or government nonintervention in the market.
Wrong. Monopoly growth and cartelization occurrs only after government intervention. Without the coercion of government, someone will cheat the attempted cartel or monopoly. Under laissez-faire, monopoly is an impossibility.
Known as the Gilded Age (the period between the Civil War and World War I), this period saw the phenomenal rise of the Robber Barons and their great trusts (monopolies)
Cartelizatin was actually a product of the Progressive era, beginning with the 1896 election and William Jennings Bryan changing the Democrats from laissez-faire proponents to statists like the Republicans. All the anti-trust laws were really cartelization laws conceived by the Rockefeller group, Morgan group, etc.
John D. Rockefeller monopolized oil under his Standard Oil Company; J.P. Morgan dominated finance; Andrew Carnegie, steel; James Hill, railroads.
Change “monopolized” to “cartelized” and this sort of makes sense. Although Morgan cartelized railroads as well as banking. Rockefeller also cartelized banking. Not sure exactly about Carnegie and steel.
Historians have well chronicled the ruthlessness of these men – Morgan once remarked that “I don’t know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.” Rockefeller’s father once boasted that “I cheat my boys every chance I get, I want to make 'em sharp.” These men lived for market conquest, and plotted takeovers like military strategy.
Historians say they were ruthless, it was the free market’s fault, and the government saved everyone. In reality, these guys did plot takovers like military strategy, using the government to screw the common man with things like the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax amendment.
In summary, Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie actually are the bad guys, but not for the reason stupid liberals think. They are bad because they used government as a tool to maintain their own wealth and enslave the rest of us. They also have used tax-exempt foundations to take over public education, the medical establishment, the media, and pretty much any influential organization you can think of.
Please give me a source on this!
"Known as the Gilded Age (the period between the Civil War and World War I), this period saw the phenomenal rise of the Robber Barons and their great trusts (monopolies)
Cartelizatin was actually a product of the Progressive era, beginning with the 1896 election and William Jennings Bryan changing the Democrats from laissez-faire proponents to statists like the Republicans. All the anti-trust laws were really cartelization laws conceived by the Rockefeller group, Morgan group, etc."
He is actually semi-right on that one. We saw a big growth in government involvment in the economy between the Civil War and WW1 (and afterwards into the progessive era). Lots of cartelisation and government intervention. Lincoln was a tyrant and a born corporatist.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/RunningtheMachine-LincAdmin.jpg
I’m basically just parroting snippets of Rothbard I pick up here and there. I don’t think what I said is correct. Some laws were sold to the public as anti-big business but were really written by big business to create a cartel. The Federal Reserve is the most obvious example of this, just read any anti-fed book like The Case Against the Fed by Rothbard of The Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin. Other anti-trust laws may have been well-meaning, but all they did was reduce the efficiency of the market with arbitrary regulations.
Articles by Rothbard:
The Business-Government Alliance
Speeches by Rothbard:
The Progressive Era Triple Alliance: Government as Cartelizer
Tariffs, Inflation, Anti-Trust and Cartels
Cartelization of Banking: The Fed
The Rise of Big Business: The Failure of Trusts and Cartels: part 1, part 2
You can also find all these speeches on the iTunes podcast “Article archives for Murray Rothbard”
Sorry no sources for specific anti-trust laws, but I’m sure some are covered in there…
The use of “monopoly” has been perverted beyond the means.
Has anyone read the story behind the Sherman Act by DiLorenzo?
