Why so serious...winners and losers of health-care reform.

Geesus... This guy Rocketman guy is incorrigible. One of the biggest problems with robber barons was the trust they had with multi companies so there's no real completion. It had nothing to do with the government. The barons would sit on different and often competing company's boards to dictate national prices.


Rocketman...
It's not impossible to make the argument that robber barons are/were good for the country, but boooyyy you'll need a lot of credentials to do so. Right now, you're just just giving half truths and generalizations to go against what many economist have disproved. Pick your battles elsewhere. It would be easier.

 

No, because a monopoly owned the materials needed to create another railroad. There was no way to get materials to build a train, to move materials if they could get them, etc.

One monopoly overcoming another isn't a good example of why monopolies allow competition.

 

No, because fixed costs/barriers to entry are too high, and marginal costs are low to nonexistent.

These industries are called natural monopolies and are regulated accordingly.

This concept has been recognized for about a century or so.

This tends to put the kibosh on your theory that monopolies don't exist.

 

Doesn't Technology erode what was once 'natural monopolies'.
Wouldn't electricity transmission be an example of that?

Didn't the technological advent of cell phones eliminate the once 'natural' monopoly of phone transmission?

I just believe even natural monopolies are a technological breakthrough away from ending.

 

Most natural monopolies are replaced by other natural monopolies.

Telegraphs were replaced by telephones. Telephones are replaced by cellular phones. Natural monopolies all of them.

And of course you are discounting the decades and decades of inefficiencies which accrue until they are replaced.

You are making me dumb, I may have to stop this.

 

How is this a bad example. In these third world nations, the government is a function of the robber barons. By all intent and purpose, the government is an extension of the robber barons ideals because money is the vehicle that gives them free and unrestricted reign over the market. The government is irrelevant is this case. It is the effect of "free market reign" with no competition that defines what a robber baron is... either in third world countries or 19th century America.

 

err.. I mean, "because government is the vehicle"

 

You don't own a business do you? Sounds like everything you know came out of a textbook.

Kind of like our President. All theory and no real experience owning or working in a real money making business.

 

Ever heard of the Rural Electrification Administration?

 

Did you resort to starting your own business after you flunked out of college when your professor laughed hysterically at your "monopolies don't ever exist!!" exam answer in Econ 101?

 

Labor unions helped create cleaner and safer working conditions.

 

and gave us the weekend!

 

never have i been happier i changed my moniker. :grin:

 

Are they still important? They certainly aren't needed in the same way they once were.

 

Holy cow, I stepped away from this thread for 24 hrs and look where it has gone. :grin:

 

all of those things eventually out live their usefulness

it's cyclical really

certain industries, education for example, are being somewhat drowned by their unions

 

Which cell phone company is a monopoly?

 

None are, because the wireless spectrum is regulated by the FCC.

 

All the wireless companies came from att and they are slowly merging back into ATT.

 

Still, isn't it interesting that all Family Plans cost about the same.