The Angry Economist

You want to buy from a monopoly! Trust me on this one, and read on.

In the marketplace as everyone knows it today, monopolies are almost always bad. That's because they have a government-granted franchise which permits them to charge monopoly prices. When a monopoly has a franchise like that, they can restrict output, charge a higher price, and make more money. In a free market, without a franchise, anybody charging monopoly prices will soon have a competitor.

Okay, can you see it coming? A free-market monopoly, without a government franchise (like a license, or a copyright, or a patent), can only keep its monopoly by charging prices low enough to keep out competitors. Another way to say that is: a monopoly seller in a free market will always give you a better price than anybody else who might enter the market, otherwise ... they would.

Thus, you want to buy from a monopoly, but only if it's a free-market monopoly. And unfortunately, we've regulated them out of business. The only monopolies you'll see are charging monopoly prices, which they get away with because the government has given the monopoly in the first place.

A monopoly is a good thing, but only under conditions outside of our experience.

Haha! xkcd notes that some problems are simply hard to solve. That attempting to impose a solution is necessarily an improvement. That sometimes it makes the situation much, much worse."

The government needs to get out of the marrying business. Marriage should be a religious arrangement. Continuous lengthy cohabitation should, absent a contract to the contrary, be a default contract laying out certain rights as would a common-law marriage. Apart from that, the government should have nothing to say.

The controversy over gay marriage should be a lesson to everyone who wants the government to do more in society. Every disagreement comes a reason for political unrest.

The more government interference in civil society, the less civilized and the less peaceful the society.

Gary Reback is one of those attorneys who understands his subject very well. Unfortunately, since he isn't an economist, and shows no evidence of having studied, it doesn't MATTER how well he understands antitrust. You can always tell someone who is ignorant of the operation of markets when they say "self-policing" in reference to how companies behave when not regulated by legislation.

First, understand that free markets are not without regulation. The participants in the market regulate the behavior of other participants, by their choice of who to cooperate with and who to spurn. But secondly, corporations never Never NEVER NEVER self-police. Never. Ever. Not on a good day, not on a bad day. That's not how free markets work. Somebody who understands how they work would NEVER use that phrase. Corporations regulate the behavior of other corporations. They're all greedy mother-fuckers, and they wouldn't hesitate to cut their mother's throat, OR their own prices in order to gain market share.

Consequently, the only way for a company to persistently[1] dominate their market is with assistance of the government. You know. The same government that Gary Reback wants to have the power to regulate markets.

Yeah. That's why this article is entitled "Dimbulb". That would be Gary.

[1] I would note that Pedipaws is currently dominating the market for pet claw grinders. That's okay, they created the market, they should be allowed to own it, for a while. The only way to dominate a market is by creating a new product that nobody else has, by getting a government monopoly (e.g. a patent), or by constantly offering a better deal than anyone else. That's how Standard Oil got and kept its monopoly -- by constantly improving its process and driving the price of a barrel of oil into the ground.

It is NOT MORAL to use violence (or threats of violence) to change the behavior of peaceful people. This is true no matter what they are doing: whether they are talking to each other, writing to each other, meeting with each other, worshipping with each other, or, yes, trading with each other.

Even if you COULD successfully direct the behavior of other people who have their own plans, IT IS NOT MORAL TO DO SO.

Yeeks! Patri Friedman disses folk activism, which I sadly find myself trapped in here.

Sing it, choir!

I was wandering around NYC in the late afternoon today, taking a break from work. Wandered my way down a rathole, into the nether regions of the roads behind Belleview Hospital. Only way out without retracting my steps was to go through the hospital. On the way out, I noticed the old facade of the hospital, with some beautiful stonework. Of course I took a photo, being careful not to include any faces in the photo.

Immediately a security guard came over and told me "No photos! You'll have to delete any photos you've taken!". I refused, of course. The Supreme Court has ruled that you have a right to take a photo from public property. Bellevue Hospital, being owned by the city, is of course public property. He called for his supervisor, an older and presumably wiser gentleman.

The supervisor gently explained to me (obviously an ignoramus hick from out of town but I repeat myself) that the hospital board has a policy prohibiting photos. I didn't bother explaining to him that the hospital doesn't rule on the Constitution, nor can it take away a basic civil right. I explained that I respected people's right to privacy and didn't include any faces in the photo. He explained that if I did it again, he could confiscate my camera, but that I could keep my photo. No point in explaining the law to him; I just shook his hand, said thanks, and left.

So, no, he still thinks he can threaten peaceful people, but since he respected my civil rights (since I knew them), no harm done.

The moral of the story is: know your civil rights, or you WILL lose them.

I went to 4-H Shooting Sports club with my son today, and shot a .22 rifle for the first time in 30 years. Once I got the rifle sighted in, 4 of 10 were within a bullet's diameter of where I wanted to put them, and on the single target, all were within the innermost circle.

Gun control means hitting your target! w00t!

The expertise of politicians lies in getting elected. NOT in governing or for that matter, in running car companies. A little humility, please!

Austrian Economists can explain this recession in the same way that all the other ones are explained:

• Government inflates the currency.
• Businesspeople think business is expanding, and invest and hire.
• Because the currency increase isn't a result of saving, but instead a result of inflation, there are no savings to spend to buy the products the businesspeople created.
• Businesspeople have to sell their capital goods at a loss and fire people.
• Economy stays in the doldrums until there's enough savings to justify business expansion OR until the government inflates "the hair of the dog".

This is why it's so painful when government stops inflating. But if government doesn't stop inflating, you have Turkey, or Zimbabwe, or Germany in the 30's. What is our government doing right now? Inflating. But inflating doesn't fix anything -- it just postpones the pain. The only fix is if people save money to fund the business expansion. What is Krugman (the moron) telling us that we need to do? Spend, spend, spend, don't save! Except for the fact that every REAL economist will tell you that that's stupid, everyone believes Krugman because back before his brain failed, he got a Nobel Prize.