All Posts Tagged With: "monopoly"
The Problem with Privatization
If the goal is efficiency in delivering the goods, private ownership is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.
26Jan2012 | Steven Horwitz | 27 comments | ContinuedHow Intellectual Property Hampers the Free Market
Advocates of free-market capitalism commonly believe in the legitimacy of intellectual property (IP) because IP rights are thought to be important to a system of private property. But are they? There are good reasons to think that IP is not actually property—that it is actually antithetical to a private-property, free-market order. By intellectual property, I [...]
25May2011 | N. Stephan Kinsella | 56 comments | ContinuedCompetition and Monopoly: A Refresher
“Gym Now Stresses Cooperation, Not Competition,” blared a headline in the New York Times a decade ago. The story was about an elementary school where “confrontational” games, team sports, and elimination rounds were changed or scrapped so that differences between students’ athletic abilities would be minimized. Perhaps this is fine for grade-school gym class, but [...]
21Apr2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 2 comments | ContinuedSeasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government
Libertarians have done a wonderful job of pointing out the inefficiency and cruelty of government and identifying some of the causes. We know that current policies are bad; we know that such policies are the inevitable outcome of unrestrained democracy; and we even have some ideas about what would work better. The most fundamental problem [...]
24Feb2011 | and Patri Friedman | 11 comments | ContinuedAsk Not For Whom the Drug Tolls
“Fifty years ago, it made sense to assert that mental illnesses are not diseases, but it makes no sense to say so today. Debate about what counts as mental illness has been replaced by legislation about the medicalization and demedicalization of behavior. Old diseases such as homosexuality and hysteria disappear. New diseases such as gambling [...]
22Dec2010 | Wendy McElroy | 13 comments | ContinuedIs Freedom a Radical Idea?
The good old days are not behind us but rather lie ahead.
29Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 22 comments | ContinuedWorld War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies
Journalist Ken Auletta’s book about the Microsoft antitrust case is not just another Microsoft-bashing diatribe. On the contrary, World War 3.0 is a remarkably evenhanded investigation of this infamous case, providing some good insights into the basis (or lack of it) of the now-nullified judicial order to break Microsoft into two companies. Unfortunately, the book [...]
30Jun2010 | Barbara R. Hunter | 0 comments | ContinuedIs Monopoly Good or Bad?
Monopoly is nearly always seen as something undesirable. Courts have wrestled with monopoly for ages, sometimes defining it as “the power to control prices and exclude competition,” “restraining trade,” or “unfair and anticompetitive behavior.” Should monopolistic practices be condemned and outlawed? Let’s look at anticompetitive behavior and practices, but let’s not confine ourselves to what’s [...]
30Jun2010 | Walter E. Williams | 2 comments | ContinuedHealth Care and Radical Monopoly
In a recent article for Tikkun, Dr. Arnold Relman argued that the versions of health care reform currently proposed by “progressives” all primarily involve financing health care and expanding coverage to the uninsured rather than addressing the way current models of service delivery make it so expensive. Editing out all the pro forma tut-tutting of [...]
23Feb2010 | Kevin A. Carson | 23 comments | ContinuedCharacter Crisis Origin in Government Schools
Seven faculty and staff at Spirit Creek Middle School in Augusta, GA have recently been implicated in a sex scandal that was being carried out on school premises during school hours. With principals, teachers, and coaches like these, is it any wonder that so many students are becoming adults with corrupt moral compasses? This is [...]
11Dec2008 | Mason Drake | 0 comments | ContinuedFreedom and the Right of Self-Determination
The most guarded prerogative of every government is its legitimized monopoly over the use of force within its territorial jurisdiction. The second most important prerogative is its exclusive control over all its territory. By implication, governments therefore claim an exclusive right over the political, economic, and cultural destinies of the people under their control. If [...]
1May2008 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedVolunteer Railways in Britain
In 21st-century England you don’t expect to find a fireman shoveling coal into a steam locomotive, but that’s what 59-year old Paul Rimmer does. During his shift on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, he heaves two tons of coal from the tender of engine 45212 into its roaring firebox, a tougher job than almost any [...]
1Jan2008 | James L. Payne | 1 comment | ContinuedCable-Franchise Reform: Deregulation or Just New Regulators?
Adam Summers is a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation. There is much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing among politicians who decry businesses for maintaining monopolies that harm consumers. Yet in a free market such businesses will find any monopoly position fleeting. If they charge too much or fail to provide suitable quality in their products and [...]
1Apr2007 | Adam Summers | 1 comment | ContinuedWal-Mart Wasn’t Always the Biggest
John Semmens (jsemmens@cox.net) is a transportation policy analyst at the Laissez Faire Institute in Arizona. Editor’s note: As we went to press, and as if to illustrate the point of the following article, Fortune released its 2006 list of largest corporations, showing Exxon Mobil, not Wal-Mart, on top. For all the gnashing of teeth over [...]
1Aug2006 | John Semmens | 2 comments | ContinuedOn Misplaced Concreteness in Social Theory
The following piece will not be as abstruse as its title suggests. Rather, it results from the simple observation that, time and time again, some harmful outcome or process commonly attributed to the everyday workings of the market economy actually does exist, but it exists in the realm of the government and politics. Politicians and [...]
1May2006 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Price of Free Health Care
Many health-reform proposals in the United States are modeled on the Canadian healthcare system. The usual claim is that a program similar to the one in Canada would provide all Americans access to the finest medical services while managing to be less expensive than the status quo. Unfortunately, these wonderful visions of socialized health care [...]
1May2005 | Nadeem Esmail | 2 comments | ContinuedMises on Copyrights
The widespread reproduction and “sharing” of copyrighted music on the Internet led a friend to ask me what Ludwig von Mises would have thought about the situation. The more I pondered the question, the more I concluded that Mises would have considered this just another case where copyright law must play catch-up with new technology. [...]
1Jun2004 | Bettina Bien Greaves | 2 comments | Continued-
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