Price fixing - the Feds throw the e-book at Apple

[MiM]

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

As is the idea that capitalism means that the laws should only protect the capital.

[Seth]

How can both of those be strawmen at the same time? As well as your well documented aversion to any rights on the consumer part. Please explain.

Because they are amphigorical polar extremes that indicate both a lack of understanding of my philosophy and a lack of interest in rational debate.

Now, if you'd care to approach the question honestly and rationally with the intention of actually learning and imparting interesting information and opinions I might be persuaded to amplify more.

[Seth]

Capitalism requires regulation to function properly.

Correct. Regulation to prevent the initiation of force or fraud.

A free market must also account for anti-competitive forces, of which price-fixing, trusts, cartels, and monopolies are examples.

And free markets that are actually free do indeed account for such things through market forces alone. Regulation is not necessary except to regulate the authority of government to meddle with the free market.

There are many examples of laws and regulations that must exist for capitalism to function in a meaningful way -

Like, for example -- limited liability laws -- corporations have limited liability because of laws, not because a group of people can band together and call themselves a fictitious name and pretend to absolve themselves of liability. Shareholders of corporations have limited liability because we have corporation codes as part of our laws. Without that, raising capital would not be practical because investors would be exposing themselves to personal liability for the debts of the companies they invest in.

Well, yes and no. Limited liability is a method of reducing capital risk, but it's also a method of encouraging corporate malfeasance. It's a double-edged knife that is not always supportive of a free and fair marketplace.

A free market requires law and order, so we need various laws against theft, fraud, trespass and all that.

Correct. One of the few legitimate powers of government is to use its police power to prevent the initiation of force or fraud. The problem is that today governments abuse that lawful authority by using the police power to pick and choose winners and losers in the marketplace for reasons of corruption, greed and political power. That's an abuse of government power.

Preventing and sanctioning BP from polluting the Gulf of Mexico through incompetent and negligent operations is a legitimate exercise of government power. Banning deep drilling in the Gulf to domestic oil producers while simultaneously granting billions of dollars in direct support to Venezuelan oil companies to drill at twice the depth off of Venezuela combined with the banning of deep drilling in the Gulf, which has the practical and intended effect of moving deep-water drilling platforms from US waters to Venezuela is an illegitimate and flatly unconstitutional exercise of government meddling with the markets to choose who wins and who loses.

There have to be commercial transaction laws to regulate how liens, security interests, mortgages and commercial paper function. Securities laws regarding stocks, bonds and such.

Yes and no. The Common Law is generally good enough, but a voluntary Commercial Credit Code is acceptable to Libertarians. That way consumers can choose to do business with organizations that subscribe to those rules or not, as they wish.

The list goes on and on.

Not really. The fundamental Libertarian precepts of free markets, regulation of the initiation of force or fraud, and the sovereign right of the individual to enter into a voluntary contractual relationship and be bound by those provisions are all that's really needed.

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.[/quote]

Absolutely correct. Worse, it's usually a willful and deliberate ignorance that flows from deep psychological disturbance in the personalities of liberals that leaves them bereft of logic or reason.

[MiM]

Seth, see my last answer to Coito. You seem to want a hellowa lot of protection for the capital (like intellectual property laws), and very little for the consumer.

[Seth]

Seth, see my last answer to Coito. You seem to want a hellowa lot of protection for the capital (like intellectual property laws), and very little for the consumer.

You're entirely wrong.

[MiM]

So then my comments weren't strawmen after all.

[Seth]

So then my comments weren't strawmen after all.

Yes, they were. And dishonest and disreputable insult to the forum and its members.

[MiM]

So maybe yo want to protect consumers, after all? Tell us how you want to strengthen consumer protection, e.g. to outweigh the currently heavily inflated copyright and patent laws. You do want equal protection for consumers and capital, don't you? That's what you claimed.

[Cormac]

Capitalism requires regulation to function properly. A free market must also account for anti-competitive forces, of which price-fixing, trusts, cartels, and monopolies are examples.

There are many examples of laws and regulations that must exist for capitalism to function in a meaningful way -

Like, for example -- limited liability laws -- corporations have limited liability because of laws, not because a group of people can band together and call themselves a fictitious name and pretend to absolve themselves of liability. Shareholders of corporations have limited liability because we have corporation codes as part of our laws. Without that, raising capital would not be practical because investors would be exposing themselves to personal liability for the debts of the companies they invest in.

A free market requires law and order, so we need various laws against theft, fraud, trespass and all that.

There have to be commercial transaction laws to regulate how liens, security interests, mortgages and commercial paper function. Securities laws regarding stocks, bonds and such.

The list goes on and on.

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

[Seth]

So maybe yo want to protect consumers, after all? Tell us how you want to strengthen consumer protection, e.g. to outweigh the currently heavily inflated copyright and patent laws. You do want equal protection for consumers and capital, don't you? That's what you claimed.

No it's not. I advocate free markets. This means free of government meddling and coercion and free of incidences of the initiation of force or fraud by anyone.

The role of government is merely to police the markets to prevent fraud and force being initiated.

Copyright and patent laws that protect the rights of creators are valid government operations to, and only to that extent because he who creates an intellectual property or new device owns it and for another to steal that expression or idea is an initiation of fraud.

In my world there is no time limit on either copyright or patent PROTECTION of the rights of the creator. The obligation of the government is to protect that right forever. The art that I have created is mine, and it's the property of my heirs after I die, and theirs when they die, and only they, or I, have the right to market that property, and that right is perpetual.

That's the flaw in copyright and patent law; that the government presumes to take the exclusive rights of the creator after some statutory period and vest it in the "public domain" against the will of the actual owners of the property.

There is no moral justification for this and in my view it constitutes a gross constitutional violation of 4th Amendment rights.

It might be different if the government declined to intervene in the first place and left the enforcement of the exclusivity of product distribution to the free markets and civil courts, but as I said one of the legitimate functions of government, if any, is to police the marketplace to prevent and punish fraud. Misappropriating and profiting from something you did not create is fraud, plain and simple, and the government's role should be in protecting the rights of the true creator in perpetuity.

Instead, copyright law essentially says "you do not own your intellectual property, the State owns it but allows you to profit from it exclusively for only X number of years, after which your property is forfeit to the State and becomes property of the Collective without the government being compelled to justly compensate you for that taking."

Clear 4th Amendment violation.

As for consumers, if you want to buy my art or intellectual property from me, then you negotiate with me and pay the mutually acceptable price for that iteration of the work, which physical form becomes your property to do with as you please, you may keep it, resell it or destroy it. But you may not COPY it and attempt to profit from work you did not perform, that is fraud.

If you don't like the terms under which I allow you to enjoy my work, then don't buy it.

Pretty simple really.

Now you try to justify government seizing private property for public use without just compensation through the scam of copyright and patent law.

[MiM]

It's not a natural law that ideas and thoughts are owned. That is completely a construct of our society. There is nothing inherently natural or obvious in laws and concepts that say, "If I hear you sing a song, I am not allowed to snap up the tune and start singing the same song myself, even publicly and making money for it." If we take this one step further, the whole concept of ownership is a human construction, especially views on ownership of land have varied strongly through history, and there are still things that cannot be privately owned, like air we breathe.

You want the private ownership part of the societal construction that creates a market to be upheld and forcefully protected by government, and you want that ownership to be absolute. That means you want the government to meddle with the market, you just want them to be very one sided about it. You are not advocating liberty you are advocating ownership.

[Coito ergo sum]

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

As is the idea that capitalism means that the laws should only protect the capital.

Well sure, but, who thinks that?

[Coito ergo sum]

A free market must also account for anti-competitive forces, of which price-fixing, trusts, cartels, and monopolies are examples.

And free markets that are actually free do indeed account for such things through market forces alone. Regulation is not necessary except to regulate the authority of government to meddle with the free market.

This isn't exactly true, as private enterprises can organize to monopolize suppress competition and thus distort the market.

There are many examples of laws and regulations that must exist for capitalism to function in a meaningful way -

Like, for example -- limited liability laws -- corporations have limited liability because of laws, not because a group of people can band together and call themselves a fictitious name and pretend to absolve themselves of liability. Shareholders of corporations have limited liability because we have corporation codes as part of our laws. Without that, raising capital would not be practical because investors would be exposing themselves to personal liability for the debts of the companies they invest in.

Well, yes and no. Limited liability is a method of reducing capital risk, but it's also a method of encouraging corporate malfeasance. It's a double-edged knife that is not always supportive of a free and fair marketplace.

Where there isn't a corporations code providing limited liability to shareholders, than any shareholder of the company (someone who invests money to have an equity interest) is essentially a "partner" in the group, and as such is liable personally for all the debts and obligations of the enterprise, because the people are the enterprise.

There have to be commercial transaction laws to regulate how liens, security interests, mortgages and commercial paper function. Securities laws regarding stocks, bonds and such.

Yes and no. The Common Law is generally good enough, but a voluntary Commercial Credit Code is acceptable to Libertarians. That way consumers can choose to do business with organizations that subscribe to those rules or not, as they wish.

I'm not talking about Libertarians. I'm talking about Capitalism.

The list goes on and on.

Not really. The fundamental Libertarian precepts of free markets, regulation of the initiation of force or fraud, and the sovereign right of the individual to enter into a voluntary contractual relationship and be bound by those provisions are all that's really needed.

Libertarian Capitalism and anarcho-capitalism are not the only or even the original forms of capitalism.

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

Absolutely correct. Worse, it's usually a willful and deliberate ignorance that flows from deep psychological disturbance in the personalities of liberals that leaves them bereft of logic or reason.[/quote]

I would not agree with that. It may well flow from a reasonable difference of opinion, or an opposition to capitalism overall.

[MiM]

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

As is the idea that capitalism means that the laws should only protect the capital.

Well sure, but, who thinks that?

Seth seems to be awfully close.

[Seth]

The idea that capitalism means that we don't have any government is some strange idea that seems to be born of a modern day ignorance of what capitalism is and how it works.

As is the idea that capitalism means that the laws should only protect the capital.

Well sure, but, who thinks that?

Seth seems to be awfully close.

You only perceive that because you're willfully ignorant.