Pursuing praxis

Monopoly: where a single company becomes and remains the sole or majority producer in a given industry or market.

Take-home points:

1. There are two kinds of monopolies in business, not one: monopolies resulting from rights violations (whether commited by government, business, or an individual), and monopolies resulting from voluntary agreements among people.

2. What makes companies able to out-compete all or most of their competitors is quite different in each case - exploiting economic pressures created by rights violations (which are properly illegal) vs. expliting economic pressures stemming only from the rights-respecting choices and agreements made by businesses and individuals, producers and consumers (i.e. the free market). From a certain perspective, monopolies aren’t caused or controlled by the company; they are enabled (and therefore ultimately controlled) by government favor, directive or control, OR they are enabled (and therefore ultimately controlled) by the choices and desires of consumers.

3. Whatever enables a monopoly to exist determines how a monopoly can behave in the absence of competitors, while remaining solvent. If rights violations are how a monopoly was created, maintenance and/or multiplication of rights violations are necessary for it to continue being a monopoly. If consistent respect for rights (by government, and by the business) is how a business became a monopoly, that is the context in which it must continue to do business. A monopoly on a free market must always race alongside the changing interests and desires of its consumer base, in true Red Queen fashion, and against the constant pressures of new competitors and multiplying niches.

4. Equating monopolies with lack of competition is therefore inaccurate and counter-productive thinking. It lumps together phenomena based on a common result, ignoring the very different processes by which the results were produced. (I.e. thinking correlation is causation; or, mistaking homoplasy for symplesiomorphy, for you evolution folks). 

5. This kind of thinking also has the effect of smearing honest businessmen (by equating them with rights violators) and ignoring or forgetting about the conditions they need to conduct business properly: consistent protection of individual rights, an emergent property of which is a free market. This poor thinking fosters a kind of self-imposed, society-wide forgetting that makes it seem like free markets are the culprit, and more government tinkering is needed to shore them up or make them fair. Clearly, this results in a positive feedback cycle of increasing government intervention and control.

6. Rights are a kind of social principle - and as such, they are designed to be heeded absolutely consistently, and for extremely good reasons. Ignoring a rule of thumb may cause you some inconvenience; ignoring a principle will keep you from reaching a goal altogether. If you have a right not to be punched, but someone punches you randomly once a month, he does not respect your right; and a government that deems once a month to be ok, has no actual grasp of what a right is. Rights and consistency are inseparable.

7. Given that the proper job of government is to protect individual rights - and it’s the only entity that can in a civil society - the biggest, most consistent criminal in the history of "monopolies" is the government. (Unless properly and explicitly restrained at all necessary points, all governments are primed to be criminals. They specialize in the use of force. It’s just a matter of how and why).

8. But, the government is only as good as the people that elect it, compose it, run it, and use it: it’s a mirror with a memory, originally designed and framed by craftsmen with a particular vision, but constantly tested, tweaked and modified by the centuries of people that come after. It evolves, with constraints (which can also evolve).

9. But, unlike biologically evolved entities, government need not be ignorant of the forces which shape it, or complacent about what it becomes, because (up to a point) it is an extension of ourselves as a society. A healthy, far-sighted, self-regulating, delimited organism - or cancer. We do have a choice.

10. So what have you done today, this week, this year to value and protect individual rights - your rights?

I discovered an interesting paragraph on the Wall Street Journal’s online opinion homepage, a single short paragraph, halfway down the right side, titled About Us. It says:

We speak for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s "Wealth of Nations." So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.

I found it after doing a window search for ‘collectivist’, while looking for David Boaz’s May 28 editorial entitled Our Collectivist Candidates (which I did not find on wsj.com, but is posted on Boaz’s Cato Institute page).  

Now, I’ve liked the WSJ for many years. I got my first subscription when working in Boston, and it sucked up untold hours of my non-working time. Good stuff. I never read about their mission statement, political or economic philosophy (though you can guess it, especially when comparing its contents with the SF Chronicle or NY Times).

But here it is - and it’s good! I like that it explicitly lumps together kings, collectivists, dictators, bullies, and majorities. Because all those people can claim is some combination of the authority to use force (via other people under his control) or the ability to be force, by sheer dint of taking up space like a herd of cattle and threatening to trample you by having more people on ‘their’ side. The former has simply coopted and coordinated the latter.

I also like that the individual is explicitly mentioned, although I might wish for ‘individual rights’ to be mentioned as well, but it’s only a paragraph. And they link to a 1951 editorial entitled A Newspaper’s Philosophy (which is under About Us and not Our Philosophy …) that does:

On our editorial page we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, in his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary. We are not much interested in labels but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical. Just as radical as the Christian doctrine.

We have friends but they have not been made by silence or pussyfooting. If we have enemies, we do not placate them.