Companies market shitty products every day and advertise them as superior. Once someone discovers how shitty the product really is, millions of people have already bought it and the company is able to profit off of an inferior product. In the end, the consumer suffers a loss of money and the company gets money for doing little and contributing little. You think that a company HAS to have a good product to be successful, but all it has to do is make it SEEM like it has a good product. People may not discover how bad a product is until it has been popular on the market for years.

Companies make money by selling goods and services. Just because people buy a good or service does not mean it is of sufficient
quality.

A monopoly is a business. The military is not. You can compare the two and equate the military to a business, but the military is not and should never be a business.

Wrong wrong wrong.

A monopoly DOES NOT have to be "granted special privilege" by a government. A monopoly, according to Merriam-Webster is "exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices." A monopoly can rise on an unregulated market without any attention from the government.

Want an example? Say there are 10 companies in a certain market. Company 1 offers a superior product for a low price, and consequently is more successful than its competitors. Company 1 continues to be successful and grows rich enough to buy out the other companies. Company 1 has now created a monopoly. Now that Company 1 doesn't have any competition, and doesn't have a government regulating it, it can offer a shitty product for a high price. Since it is the only company in that market, people who want that certain good or service will have to buy it from Company 1, since Company 1 is the only one offering it. Soon, Company 11 seizes the opportunity and offers a good product for a low price. It starts to grow. However, Company 1 is extremely rich and powerful by now. They buy out Company 11, and now have a monopoly again. Eventually, Company 12 tries to do the same thing, and company 1 cannot buy it out. Everyone is satisfied for a while, but then Company 12 buys out all of the other companies and the process begins again.

This is the fate of an unregulated free market. A cycle of monopolies rising and falling. There is little economic stability, and in the end, neither the business nor the consumer is satisfied.

See above.

This has absolutely nothing to do with free markets. And, to answer your question, Switzerland would have been invaded had the Nazis not been occupied with more pressing matters. The Nazis were very pissed at Swiss for criticizing Nazism throughout the third Reich. Australia and New Zealand have never been invaded because they're on the other side of the world from where most major modern conflict has taken place. All of these countries have relatively few people (Australia at the most with about 20m, Both NZ and Switzerland have under 10m).

Americans won the American Revolution not because they were unorganized. We won it out of a combination of luck, the fact that we were fighting on our home ground, guerilla warfare tactics, and foreign aid. As history has shown, almost no country that strongly desires independence fails to get it. This desire overcomes all odds.

So it doesn't matter how many people die as long as the company is eventually defeated? The damage would have been done before the company was taken out of power.

What are you talking about? If the US didn't a large army to defend itself, we'd be speaking Japanese. The Japanese didn't bomb us because they hated us; they bombed us because they were expanding imperially to conquer new lands and resources. They would have still bombed us, and possibly worse, if we had a small army.


I'd say your failure to differentiate between "protection" and "world domination" is more insane. Do you think that if we took all of our armed forces out of the rest of the world, abolished the military, and sold the industry to squabbling businessmen than the world would say, "Oh, United States of America! We love you now!" ? You're living in a dream world. Some Middle Eastern country with an insane authoritarian in power would bomb the living shit out of us, and we wouldn't be able to do anything to defend ourself or retaliate.

I think you're probably a smart person, but you are too optimistic about a completely free market and total privatization to realize the glaring fundamental flaws that each has. You hold the opinion that a big army is always going to be oppressive. This is not true. A big army is oppressive only if it's leader is oppressive. Even if big armies were always oppressive, that doesn't mean that all public armies are big armies. I want a big army because I live in a big nation that is involved heavily in world affairs. Thus, I need a big army to ensure my nation's safety. I want a public army because military defense is a basic human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold on a market. Nobody should ever have to pay for their rights.

They also wanted a public army, not private armies. I'm afraid they lie a little farther from your position than you think.

I'm not advocating a Socialist system. And in no way is damage minimalized. In a completely free market, there are no regulations or restrictions to minimalize damage.

A company can put a "price" on anything. That doesn't mean it should be there, or that the price truly reflects the value of the good or service. Would you like to pay for the air you breathe? Would you like to pay a fee every time you say certain words? The truth is, certain things should never be private property, and turning them into private property is downright abusive. Likewise, some things can never be public property.

I respond to your arguments, not those you link to. Just because some dipshit writes something doesn't mean it's true.

If a company advertises a box full of real diamonds for 5 dollars, but actually fills the box with glass or plastic or horse shit, they will obviously have unsatisfied customers. But the product seems so attractive when they advertise it that 1 million people buy a box before word gets around that they're fake and people stop buying them altogether. The company has made 5 million dollars, and has unsatisfied customers. Companies only make profit by selling their product. If someone is unhappy with a product they bought, they still paid a company money to get it and the company profited off of that sale. Your argument makes absolutely no sense.

Okay. I guess we should get rid of every single law we have. After all, it's none of my business when a mass murderer goes on a killing spree, who's to say he should be stopped? That would be a gross violation of his right to express himself freely through mass murder! Those who don't think government should exist are unrealistic dumbshits who have no connection with reality whatsoever. Your above statement is a feeble expression of your apparent desire to have government abolished. That's why government exists, bud. It exists to protect peoples' rights and ultimately separate us from all other known life in the universe. If you don't want anyone telling you what to do, go live in Antarctica with the penguins.

Okay. Value in a free market is based purely on supply and demand. So you agree that this in no way represents a product's true value? I'm glad we agree.

No, but I feel that prices would more closely reflect the true value of a product, and that wages would more closely reflect the value of a person's labor.

A socialist state would own all resources, so it would simply create what it needed with the resources it had. Unfortunately, this does not cater to each person's individual need, which is a reason I do not support a command economy.

The way a company makes a profit is by selling a product, once the product is sold, they have made a profit and it doesn't matter how pissed a consumer is after they have already handed over their money for something.

Sure, that's true. That's a benefit of the private sector. That's why you can't have all industry in the public sector any more than you can have all industry in the private sector.

You see? I totally agree with you. That is why I believe the government needs to produce certain things for itself.


The problem with both countries is their oppressive dictatorship, not their socialism. I'd consider Canada to be pretty socialistic, but they're also democratic. That's why you don't see anyone fleeing/rebelling against Canada.


The idea is to put the people in control of food, not the government. Notice how lots of communist countries stick "People's" in front of everything. Ironically, most communist countries just abuse the system to benefit the ruling class and hurt the people. THAT is when the government is in control of something instead of the people. That's why we need democracy; so the people really are in control of such things. Food and defense should be free, or covered in taxes. They cannot be free if a private corporation controls them.

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