How did American Sugar Refining Company gain 98% of market share

Economics Economics Questions
1

Currently reading “The Constitution in Exile” by Judge Napolitano and on page 79 he talks about the United States v. E.C. Knight (1985) where congress attempted to prevent American Sugar from acquiring four competing refineries under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional

My question is how did American Sugar gain 98% of market share

2

I can’t answer your question in totality, but American Sugar interests received massive help from the US government in terms of enforcing property rights (large tracts of land on caribbean sugar-producing islands) which were basically given away under puppet regimes. There would be uprisings on said islands and the military would come in to calm them down and keep business moving on as usual. I can’t give you specifics for each island, but this sort of thing is given frequent reference in Rothbard’s “Banks, Wall Street and Foreign Policy”.

Here’s one specific example of US influence through puppet-leaders:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulises_Heureaux (and for further reading: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-7709.00355/abstract)

and for reference on US Military involvement in the Caribbean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations (note all the instances of ‘protecting interests’)

I hope this helps.

3

Thanks this did help

I remember learning about American sugar interests in Hawai

4

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/americans-overthrow-hawaiian-monarchy

Yeah, I think as libertarians we’ve got to support the rights of Hawaiian natives to leave the US statedom and return to self-determination. That whole incident is anathema.

5

Strange coincidence this just came out on Mises daily (I have not read the article yet)

“Murray Rothbard, in detailing the prime motives for the first war in Iraq, made a crucial point. Intervention in Iraq is indeed about oil. But it is not about national access to oil per se, but about the privileged access of certain oil producers. It is war, not for consumer capitalism, but for crony capitalists.”

6

Maybe the first war, but not the second one:

http://america-hijacked.com/2009/12/15/iraq-war-was-for-israel-not-for-iraqi-oil/

Pacify Iraq, then Syria, then you can build a pipeline to Israel.