KrishnaDreamer said:

Simple is far past Gilgamesh's understanding.

---

Silversoul said:

Absolute monopolies, perhaps not.  Some have been pretty damn close, though.  Standard Oil, for example.

---

Silversoul said:

"Consumer freedom."  "Vigorous competition."  These are nice buzzwords, but they have little bearing on the reality of the situation.  It's rather easy to gain a monopoly on a natural resource that is geographically confined to certain areas.  Just ask the DeBeers corporation.  Do you have any idea how cheap diamonds would be if they didn't corner the market?

---

Quote:

For me, though, this debate tends to miss the point.  On the one hand, you have the right-libertarian rhetoric about the virtues of free markets and the vices of government, and on the other hand you have liberals talking about how necessary government is.  My perspective is that the libertarians don't go far enough.  They see the authoritarianism in government but not in business.  They have no problem with internal dictatorships in business, so long as they are not regulated by authoritarian power of the government.  Liberals rightly see the need for corporate power to be constrained, but fail to see how government itself serves the capitalist class, and cannot help but serve it, as it is part of the capitalist superstructure.

---

Quote:

I prefer a world ruled by neither states nor bosses.  One in which people have autonomy over their own labor, and exchange the products of their labor on the basis of reciprocity rather than profit-seeking.

---

Quote:

Where people take as much land as they need, but don't accumulate land and resources for profit under the protection of state-enforced property laws.  A genuine anti-authoritarianism must also be anti-capitalist.

---