***LOL! We should let Congress control the supply of money. With Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Chris Dodd, Kennedy, Schumer, Pelosi, Reid, et al, in control what could possibly go wrong?***
He didn’t say that.
***Do you believe prices were stable before the Fed was created? Because we didn’t have booms or busts prior to the Fed?***
We had central banks and centralized banking before the fed and when we didn’t, the government often let banks suspend specie payment taking away their incentive not to expand the money supply through fractional reserve banking.
***Yeah, no police force to arrest bad guys, no judicial system to adjudicate contract disputes and no military to ensure the free flow of trade around the world.***
Police, military, and and a judiciary are necessary to capitalism to prevent fraud, embezzlement, murder, etc. and to protect property rights and ensure contracts. It isn’t capitalism without these things.
***I suppose you are also against antitrust laws. What do you think our economy would look like today without antitrust laws? Do monopolies allow for more freedom or less?***
Anti-trust laws are totally unnecessary. In the free market, a monopoly comes into existence if it can create a better product at a lower price than all its competition (which is rare). That benefits consumers which is why the company takes all the market share. If it starts raising prices, competition will begin to reemerge since at these higher prices, they can now compete again. The monopoly will have to keep prices low or else lose market share.
This assumes of course that the government doesn’t get involved and, say, pass heavy regulations on the industry that the monopoly can afford while those trying to enter the market or small competitors can not afford. That is a monopoly kept alive by government intervention. In essence, the government prevents the market from working. The government can also simply grant legal privilege to a company over a certain industry much like what was done during the depression, although those were cartels.
Cartels can also not exist long on the free market because if a group of firms tries to fix costs, it is always in someone’s interest to lower cost and take market share. Cartels and monopolies can not exist in the free market if they do not benefit consumers, meaning they will be taking losses rather than turning profits.
And most cases of the use of anti-trust law have been against firms that have benefited consumers. Standard Oil, IBM, and Microsoft were hardly guilty of harming consumers (and in any case they didn’t have 100% of the market share).
If the Fed is unconstitutional then who/what is constitutionally responsible for managing the money supply? Congress? The argument has been made here over and over again that Congress is the only constitutionally authorized organization to do so. I'm guessing you have another suggestion that's explicitly identified in the Constitution.
We had central banks and centralized banking before the fed and when we didn’t, the government often let banks suspend specie payment taking away their incentive not to expand the money supply through fractional reserve banking.
And that gave us stable prices? No experiences with 5% inflation one year and then 5% deflation the next? No boom and bust cycles? We never had tens of thousands of families and businesses destroyed because of wildly swinging inflation and deflation before the Fed?
Police, military, and and a judiciary are necessary to capitalism to prevent fraud, embezzlement, murder, etc. and to protect property rights and ensure contracts. It isn’t capitalism without these things.
All supplied by government. The other poster said:
Capitalism only works with no involvement by government? Do you agree with me that this is a ridiculous statement? Sounds like you do. If so, why even bring it up?
Anti-trust laws are totally unnecessary.
Because all industries have low barriers for entry and a monopoly would never be able to manipulate the ebb and flow of supply and demand? Because without robust competition we can still have innovation? To think that monopolies will benefit consumers is naive at best.
I was told earlier this week on this forum that Ronald Regan was not a "true conservative", and neither was Jack Kemp. Now I'm being told, at least that's what it seems, that Teddy Roosevelt was not a "true conservative" because he supported antitrust legislation. When will we finally elect our first conservative president? Ron Paul 2012?