: : Poeple seem to know precious little about monopolies, I think its because there is the prevailing belief that economics is zero sum, and that competition is win or lose with nothing in between. Perhaps Microsoft IS a monopoly? Should Gates be banished to hell for being successful? The U.S. Gov't can take care of the company if need be.
: My local bus company is a monopoly, so I deig them nicely- you and Joel accepted that certain sectors could be monopolised.
: :Also any large company is assumed to have infinite reserves to fight off any contender whilst producing products of less utility.
: Not necessarilly infinite, enough to discourage investors, and articulalry, enough in comparisson with the start up costs for copetitors (i.e. If I want to set up a bus route, it'll cost me £1 million- StageCoach can throw me into bits by spending £100 K).
Suddenly you sound more like a capitalist when you talk about starting your own bus line. It would cost you a million pounds, but that's why you have INVESTORS! Get several people together to share the equity, and start your own bus line. If you can compete with the existing line, you profit while hopefully improving the local mass transit. The whole community benefits! What's so evil about that?
: : "genuine capitalism has never been tried yet"
: 19th C. England, tried.
And I will agree that genuine capitalism is destined to be a failure since there is no intervention by government to keep large monopolies under control, etc.
: : : Only under a capitalist society can one person rise from poverty and with the right idea and skills, become a millionare.
: Under socialism, no-one would be born in poverty anyway, and tehre would be no millionaires- so whats said here is 'under capitalism, only things that can happen under capitalism will happen'.
No poverty? Yes, that sounds very sweet and if the world were perfect, there never would have been poverty, illness, or death. Unfortunately, (welcome to earth!) life ain't fair and some people can be forced into unfortunate economic situations. Is it any wonder, however, that despite the risk of falling into poverty, citizens of socialists nations (ahem... CUBA!) will practically kill themselves to gain one chance to better their situation in America? I think it would be more correct to say that under socialism, there are no rich or poor because everybody is poor.
: But what of Billionaires? And Thats still a tiny number compared to the people who stay on average or below means. there are more rags to rags than rags to riches stories- capitalism cannot benefit the majority of people.
In the long run, capitalism does benefit the majority, if not all, of the people. Think about the standard of living your parents or grandparents lived under when they were young. As capitalism creates more wealth for the country it increases the standard of living. Think about how much better off your children or grandchildren will be. There will still be poverty, but few of America's poor are forced into the downright inhumane conditions that the far more numerous poor of third-world nations must live under.
