orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) (01/28/85)
> > > 2)how does Mr. Mc Kiernan intend to achieve a totally free market economy, > > one with no distortions of industrial monopoly power, local monopoly > > power, etc.? > > "Industrial monopoly power" does not affect inflation. Please name one time > in the U.S.'s history that a industrial monopoly power induced inflation. > There is a very recent example, not of an industrial monopoly, but a commodity monopoly which virtually all econometricians agree increased our whole economy's inflation rate by several percentage points: namely OPEC's oil embargo. The energy crunch had a great influence on the general economic malaise of the 70's. Now that it is over and oil is temporarily in excess supply (partially due to the extreme slackening of demand caused by the '82 recession) Americans have returned to their energy-hog ways. Eventually we will pay the price for not preparing for energy conservation rather than vast non-renewable energy waste. For now we are having a wonderful joy-ride. This present myopia reminds me of Paul Ehrlich's predictions a decade ago that the world was in for massive famines. But nothing was done, the lack of as dire consequences as Ehrlich predicted led to neglect, and finally pie in the sky corporate technocrats proclaimed that Ehrlich was just a "philosopher of doom" and all would be wonderful! Now, just as Ehrlich predicted, if not as soon as he predicted, we have massive famines in Africa. We will find ourselves in another energy crisis again as well..... > Could it be when Alcoa Aluminum was prosecuted under the Sherman Anti-Trust > act because it was "unfairly" using the latest technology to keep its costs > and hence prices below those that the smaller companies were used to? To cite one perhaps mistaken application of antitrust law does not prove the law has not achieved some prevention of monopoly. I am quite sure that the aluminum industry is another industry in which the top 3 or 4 firms control 70% of the market. So any antitrust actions may have prevented monopoly- they have not prevented oligopoly power and the consequent distortion of free market assumptions. tim sevener whuxl!orb