LOL, the desired effect of the Sherman Act was to prevent collusion to artificially RAISE prices. And then you come along and praise the act for protecting other companies from the LOWERING of prices.

You almost make the argument for me that government intervention in business is passed in disguise as means of protecting the consumer from HIGHER prices while actually keeping them from getting too low and harming corporate profits. Thank you.

My advice to you, pick up D.T. Armentano's 'Antitrust: The Case for Repeal'. Then you can take a well researched scholar's arguments and attack THOSE with your objections. Honestly, Wikipedia?

That was not an attempt at smearing anything. The idea that under capitalism eventually the economy is dominated by monopolies IS a Marxist concept along with other discredited 'theories' such as that under capitalism wages will tend to be driven to subsistance levels.

As Lord Keynes famously said: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

That was the fad during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It just didn't work then and it doesn't work without the government's help.

It's not that big business don't WANT to collude and screw people over, its just that other businessmen want to screw each other even harder. Rockefeller tried and tried, and he couldn't get Standard Oil's market share above 70%.

Well, that is an extraordinary claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence. You must provide an example of the number of companies converging to one during the period in US history that most closely approached the ideal laissez-faire that is a free market. I'd put good money that you can't.

Any free market-oriented economist would argue with you that today's America's huge regulations, taxes and bigger government intervention in the economy is the reason that companies actually got to be this huge and protected from competition from newcomers in the first place.

This claim is further strengthened by the fact that where government's hand is the least visible is where you get the most innovation. See the advent of Google, Silicon Valley startups, the computer industry and so forth.

That is - for lack of a better word - FALSE. Standard Oil's market share DECLINED for the decades before it was broken up in 1911 - it was at 67% in 1907.

A company that does that will incur a loss, which will lower its price per share, which will leave it vulnerable to an agressive takeover.

It just doesn't work like that in the real world. The same as a company that has 'cornered a market' can't just set the price it wants, high prices are in a ( relatively ) free market are to investment like blood in the water is to sharks, new competitors will enter the market.

I've already addressed this Standard-Oil-as-a-monopoly myth here on Slashdot over a dozen times.

The company had a market share of just of 64% in 1907, hardly a monopoly. It was broken up, in 1911, for POLITICAL reasons, nothing to do with 'protecting the consumer'.

It just doesn't seem to stick, though. Marxism is a particularly tough ideology is a hard parasite to weed out.

Yes, it was easy to get the sense that I compared the plot. But no, what I mean is the gung-ho 'we're US marines, lets do it, roarrr!!!' thing.

The book has politics, it's a smart read. The film is pure diluted space opera where bugs rip people's arms and marines empty clips at them.

Wow, Heinein's book just trumps that ridiculous 'Saving Private Ryan' in space.

But Babylon 5 really was beyond saving. And to my shame I followed it with a passion... kids. :-)

Maybe we would believe that the earth was flat, or that it revolved around the Sun if we lived in the middle ages and the renaissance, it was completely well known, and it was still utter bullshit. See how that's not an argument?

You should Google it up instead of calling me names or trying to argue from a place of authority, which is what you are trying to accomplish with saying my assertion is the extraordinary one.

Not that I agree that the GPL is legitimate, since personally I don't believe in ANY intellectual property, BUT, we do have copyright law which permits the existence of proprietary software, which is something I disapprove of.

In that light I see the GPL as an attempt to use that same law to create this 'microcosm' where software is freely distributed, with the added little perk of NOT ALLOWING proprietary code to free ride on in, unlike licenses like BSD who just don't give a fuck.

I call it competition between a hypotetical world with IP and one without.

Yes you are free to do whatever you want, but if you want to murder someone then no, you can't do that.

Your freedom ends where your neighbor's property begins.

Why don't you show your evidence of 'jump starting the economy out of recession' so we can all have a good laugh. :-)

Almost two decades of depression as 'jump starting an economy out of recession' is the most difficult example to disagree with?

I'm impressed.

You have no idea how an economy works. Here's a tip: it does not run on paper.

And when has 'unilateral stimulus spending' ever 'jump-started any economy out of a recession'?