Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2003 21:47:46 +0100
From: Iain McKay <iain.mckay-AT-zetnet.co.uk>
Subject: Re: owned vs. free market


hello all

Joacim Persson wrote:
> > Have you ever considered that the only reason you can
> > peasant away, while your friend merrily saws, is
> > because of the Government?
> 
> No. On contrary, it is perfectly obvious to me that it is the other way
> around; that we are being inhibited both financially and creativitely from
> state interference, while large corporations gain from state consumption,
> state taxation, state bureaucracy, and state regulations.

and, of course, that ignores the role the state played in creating
capitalism, capitalist property, capitalist property rights and 
plays defending them now.
 
> > In a capitalist free market system, economies of scale
> > make large operations more efficient then small ones.
> > this is not an opinion, it is a tested fact, supported
> > by the existance of multinationals with balance sheets
> > larger then certain countries budgets.
> 
> Ha! The guy I mentioned used to work as a mechanic for a firm which built
> really fancy and expensive saw mill machineries. They built one saw mill
> after the other, the next bigger and more advanced than the previous, and
> they all went bankrupt in the same order. But the saw his grandad built is
> still running, and he could make a lot more from it if he wasn't so lazy
> and uninterested in money (a virtue by all means), and most of all if he,
> like everyone else, didn't had the tax office spies to worry about. There
> are lots of other small saw mills in the vicinity.

Yes, *one* example can destroy the emprical fact that self-employment
has
dropped to less that 10% of the workforce and big business dominates the
economy.

<snip>
 
> Without government supporting big business, they rot away. Either implode
> from internal bureaucracy or internal corruption cost, or from not having
> immaterial rights (patents, copyrights, trademarks...) enforced by the
> state.

Lovely assertion. And does that mean you acknowledge that big business
exists
and the free market currently is a shame? 

Iain