"THE FREE MARKET HAS FAILED"

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You answer your own question. The monopoly only sets the price low until its competitors are driven out of business; then they can set the price as high as they like. Consumers don't have the time to research every product that they buy and every producer that the buy from; they will buy the cheaper product in the short term, not knowing that it means that the price will be jacked up in the long term.

Again, if the producer of the better product is driven out of business by a huge company that is manipulating prices, the consumers lose out in the long term. Why is that difficult for you to grasp?

You know what happens in biology? Species go extinct. Very often. Animals are eaten by other animals, disembowled while they are still alive and conscious by lions or wolves, suffocated by constrictor snakes. Animals die of curable diseases. Cubs die of starvation. It is messy and painful, as well as beautiful.

It is not wrong to wish that civilization is more like a garden than a jungle.

Seriously? Damn...

The libertarian standard line is that government should step out of the way, stop interfering and limit itself to enforcement of property rights and defence.

If you want 'natural selection' and a truly 'free market' you need to get rid of those two clauses.

So you spent 8 years in university getting a doctorate, 1 year working for free to get your foot in the door and another 15 working your way up to a tidy six figure salary. Well bully for you. By natural selection rules, the big mother f****r that spent three months doing press ups has every right to burn your house to the ground, rape your wife and steal your booty.

When exactly was the last time you watched a nature documentary where a gazelle charged a lion rent?

When exactly was the last time you watched a nature documentary where the lion stopped chasing the gazelle because it had respect for 'property rights' and wouldn't trespass on property owned by another lion so it decided to slink off and watch it's cubs starve to death?

When exactly was the last time you saw a gazelle dial 911 and get the boys in blue round to lock the lion up for 'violating' his 'rights' ?

I'm guessing never?

Because red in tooth and claw means just that. Your 'laws' mean nothing. Your 'property rights' mean nothing. The big violent guys win every single time, without exception. (*Unless you are very, very small bacteria and overwhelm them with force of numbers. Bacteria are bloody communists.)

If you don't get how people could not bow down worship at the idea of natural selection being the way forward, try doing this.

1) Buy a plane ticket to the K50 airport.
2) Spend a couple of weeks there.
3) Cry like a little a b***h about how good law and order is.

Get the point yet?





PS If evolution is so great, why do I have an appendix?

That's a very literal way of interpreting what I wrote. As you know, businesses don't literally eat other businesses, their food is market share. They survive by making more money then they put in. They are very much guided by the laws of nature. Those businesses which provide the most useful goods or services survive or thrive where those that do not die out.

Businesses are prevented from plundering one another (through raiding parties or whatever) which is not against the free market. The freemarket necessitates a definition and enforcement of private property. It is not without government. In a free-market system the only role for government is to protect private property.

Thanks for confirming the point about libertarian philosophy, now where in natural selection is the enforcement of property rights?


Or are you going to retract your statement?

natural selection occurs within that framework.

I suppose you might argue that societies that don't enforce property rights fail. Leaving only societies that only prevent private property rights remaining.

Natural selection has no framework that is the whole point of 'natural' selection, it accepts no masters it takes no prisoners, it obeys no arbitrary laws. If there is a framework it is unwarranted government interference.

A 'framework' relies on all actors agreeing to adhere to a certain set of rules and an authority to enforce compliance. That is not natural selection.

In what way does a free market produce a reproductive advantage? Natural selection is based on reproductive success.

ruveyn

Whether or not there is a framework is irrelevent to the idea of natural selection. Natural selection is just the idea that the best (thing) survives whereas the less well thing dies out.

It does not operate in entirely the same way. (obviously businesses can't mate and reproduce) however the ideas and principles associated with management and processes (things like factory assembly lines) are taken and used in new businesses. The ideas are re-produced in new businesses. The ideas that assist a business produce things more efficiently make it more likely to survive. The ideas that work are preserved and the ones that don't lead businesses to falter.

Natural selection isn't supposed to be something you base a society on. It is supposed to be a harsh reality.

I can't be arsed to post it but please insert a thousand facepalms right here.

By definition, 'natural' selection is natural, the clue is in the name. If you start inserting arbitrary rules you are no longer under going natural selection.

Perhaps promotion to Pope depends on how much cardinal dick you sucked, this is not natural selection.

Perhaps the breeding of a cow depends on how she appears to a farmer. This is not natural selection.

Perhaps the distribution of chilli plant depends on a scientific measurement of yield per plant or scoviles per chilli or the attractiveness of the chilli or the colour of the chilli or the length of the flowering period or the size of the chilli, this is not natural selection.

Natural selection has zero rules applied. ZERO. If some guy, even god, wades in and starts altering the NATURAL breeding patterns then you are by definition, not undergoing natural selection but undergoing artificial selection.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that this a common practice? If I am understanding you correctly, you are worried that firms will sell stuff at a loss in the hopes that they will be able to jack up prices enough in the future to recover their previous losses, recover their forgone profits, and make enough extra to justify the risk involved. This is an incredibly stupid business model unless there are barriers to market entrance preventing other firms from entering the market after you jack up your prices.

It is called a loss leader.

The practice is so common it features in the 'business studies for dummies' book.

That's not at all the same thing as predatory pricing, where the firm intends to jack up prices later after the competition has been squashed.