[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'E')ven monopolies face competition. They compete against every other good the consumer might buy with his money. Having 100% of a specific market (or less than 90% for Microsoft) doesn't give you more than a tiny share of the total global market for goods.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Z', 'A')nd Microsoft is a very bad example. Microsoft actually competes with piracy, wich provides exchangeable goods ( the very same actually ).

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', '
')You have fallen into a trap. If a company produces a product and later find a way to reduce the cost of production by 10%, they will not make more product because because it may reduce their profits.

[jaws]

I'm too clever to show you my proof, just trust me!

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'I')'m too clever to show you my proof, just trust me!

[Markos101]

Look, this is socialism: get a position in government after going to a public school and obtain a posh accent. Go to sales training, presentation training, and other forms of training such that you can convincingly avoid any question that goes to the contrary of your principles and yet appearing centre-right.

Then enter the intellectuals. The intellectuals hate working. They're too brainy to do that - what a waste of their special brain in working in a job. Ptff! For my sort of brain, especially since my mom and dad told me i was intelligent, I should go into law. Ah, but after I get into law I see the terrible suffering of people. I'm so intelligent.

I'll tell you what. I'll take my posh accent into Government (with a capital G). I have no idea about how the system works, how hard people have to work to obtain their income - and who cares? Frankly, I'm an intellectual. Life should not be run by supply or demand or consumerism. Ptff! Gosh how low we all are. I should be given powers to coerce people into my line of thinking, by forcing them through the threat of state imprisonment and violence to give up their money so that me, this fantastic intellectual who surely must know much better than everyone else being so educated and wise and suchlike, should then act under my own whim and experience the heady whine of being able to direct all this money to whereever I see fit.

Of course I didn't have to work for that money. Ptff! Why should I have to work? I'm so brainy and philosophical. And because of that, I have not the slightest idea of the hard work that has been put into this free labour that I've coerced people into obtaining, such that for some people, they work almost half the year, just for me! And they should do. Consumerism? Ptff! Gosh! How unintellectual. 'Social darwinism' must go! Ah but for it to go - I must force people to do things involuntarily by the coercion of the state! Does that tell me that perhaps I'm not doing things that people approve of? No! Of course not! And in any case, even if they did, I'm so educated and wise and have so many degrees that how could these mere consumerist people know what is best for them!

Ptff! Money? Work? You shouldn't have to do that! I don't know what else there is to do but...ptff! There must be an intellectual utopia!

And I'll tell you what...even though countless examples show over many years that it doesn't work - it leads to poverty and scarcity - it doesn't matter! With me being so philosophical and intellectual - so 'above the crowd' - for me it'll work. Because I'm special. There's something about me that makes me more special than everyone else. That's why I should coerce people! That's why I should control everyone! They don't know what's best for them! Only I do! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!

And I'll tell you what, we'll forget about the fact that the state is dependent upon the private sector, not the other way round! We'll forget that it is the 'private sector' as us intellectuals like to call it that produces, whereas the state merely consumes. I have a right to just consume! I am so educated, wise and intellectual and philosophical after all! We'll just keep on sitting in this fake, coercive island created by taxation, enjoying it and wishing one day it may become 100% taxation. But hang on, how would that work? Ohh! It wouldn't. Ah well, never mind!

And seeing as I'm so educated and wise, why should I have to compete? Compete? Ptff! That's for animals. I am an animal, and nature is intrinsically competative, but I don't want to do that! Ptff! That's for those nasty capitalists wanting to make me suffer! They plan to make me suffer my whole life! So I'll coerce those people who do compete into giving me their money involuntarily - there you go, now I don't have to compete, this intellectual King I am! There must be an intellectual utopia!

To put it another way, socialism is the intellectual's religion. Trouble is, they all want to be 'savior'. Go out and get a job.

Mark

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ohanian', '
')You have fallen into a trap. If a company produces a product and later find a way to reduce the cost of production by 10%, they will not make more product because because it may reduce their profits.

[Macsporan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'T')hat's old-school Macsporan.

[spudbuddy]

I must agree I am wholeheartedly supportive of the demise of globalization and all its attendent handmaidens.
The lion's share of our troubles come from that way of doing business.
(how many cars are products of 2 or 3 different continents?)
How many ordinary consumer items has America forgotten how to build?
A 25-cent apple from New Zealand costs much more than that when you factor in the transportation.

I wouldn't mind seeing warehousing make a comeback. Inventory.
("Just in time" delivery...burns a lot of diesel fuel...spreads a lot of trucks through the sprawl.)
Nafta can take on a whole new meaning.
The northernmost province of Mexico (a 51st state?)
That 100-mile ribbon of southernmost Canada (a 52nd?)
Distribution centers in the northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest, and central...(Seattle, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, San Diego, St. Louis)

I wonder...what will the big boys do with all their money?
How will a Wal*Mart contract?
One thing's for sure...Americans won't work for 30 cents an hour. Neither will Mexicans and Canadians, for that matter.

As fascinating as the history of the growth of capitalism/industrialization is...I'm more interested in how we're actually going to do things, after global regions contract back into themselves.
Philosophy 101 only ever went as far as the bottom line.
Prophets and profits were ever strange bedfellows.

I would imagine that much of the offshoring and outsourcing will go the way of the dinosaur. Cheaper to build and transport from Pittsburgh to New Jersey...than to haul all the way from Nogales.

Real food again. Costs way too much energy to process all the nutrition out of a spud. Let the cows chow down on grass again.

It will be interesting....as time goes by we will discover all over again how much we let get away on us.

[jaws]

Your proof is total crap man. You violated the most important assumption in economics, which is that the firm is profit-maximizing. The quantity you use in your example as the initial quantity and price sold IS NOT THE PROFIT-MAXIMIZING NUMBER! No wonder they restrict quantity when cost goes down. They would have done so even if cost hadn't changed.

If you use the old cost from your example, 14$, you find out that producing 9999 yields more profit than 10,000!

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', '
')There's nothing older than economics it's 1780's invented for the benefit of lot of gin-swilling nabobs who made a fortune flogging and torturing slaves on the Carribean Sugar islands, looting and deindustrialising India by force. None of it has ever been proved to have anything to do with real life, except in the sense that it validates predatory behaviour and attempts to prove that confiscating the yachts of the rich is a viler crime than genocide.

Me, I'm into the Enlightenment. It too started about then and ever since economics and enlightenment have been at war. It's not over yet.

Human nature such as the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade where half died on the voyage and three-quarters of the survivors in their first year of bondage? How's that for a nice, capitalist reality? Funny how economists haven't got anything to say about this catastrophe.

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'Y')our proof is total crap man. You violated the most important assumption in economics, which is that the firm is profit-maximizing. The quantity you use in your example as the initial quantity and price sold IS NOT THE PROFIT-MAXIMIZING NUMBER! No wonder they restrict quantity when cost goes down. They would have done so even if cost hadn't changed.

If you use the old cost from your example, 14$, you find out that producing 9999 yields more profit than 10,000!

[ohanian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'Y')our proof is total crap man. You violated the most important assumption in economics, which is that the firm is profit-maximizing. The quantity you use in your example as the initial quantity and price sold IS NOT THE PROFIT-MAXIMIZING NUMBER! No wonder they restrict quantity when cost goes down. They would have done so even if cost hadn't changed.

If you use the old cost from your example, 14$, you find out that producing 9999 yields more profit than 10,000!

[jaws]

Congratulations on proving nothing yet again. You've given a scenario where the margins are simply too small to have a conclusive effect, therefore the business does not alter quantity. Note that this does not prove your assertion that a business can restrict production as a consequence of lower costs to increase profits.

I'm feeling altruistic, so here's a quick proof for you.

Assume:
Profit maximization is given by equality of marginal cost and marginal revenue.
MR1=MC
Average costs fall by X, therefore in the second state the profit maximization is given by
MR2=(MC - X)

Profit equals revenue (price times quantity) minus costs
P = R - C
where R'=MR, C'=MC
MR is positive and diminishing (MR > 0, MR' < 0), MC is positive and increasing (MC > 0, MC' > 0).

Since MC - X < MC (costs have fallen), MR2 < MR1
Since MR is positive and diminishing, MR2 is a greater quantity than MR1 and a lower price.

If you want it done properly without the shortcuts I use, you can find it in any good microeconomics textbook.

[Macsporan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Are you seriously blaming economics for slavery? That's just plain slander. The truth is that 19th-century liberals were the greatest advocates AGAINST slavery. They got it outlawed in the UK and then later in the United States, two countries that surprisingly had huge economic booms. No wonder, since economics had proven that slavery was not efficient.

[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jaws', 'N')ote that this does not prove your assertion that a business can restrict production as a consequence of lower costs to increase profits.

[Z]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Markos101', 'A')nd I'll tell you what...even though countless examples show over many years that it doesn't work - it leads to poverty and scarcity - it doesn't matter! With me being so philosophical and intellectual - so 'above the crowd' - for me it'll work. Because I'm special. There's something about me that makes me more special than everyone else. That's why I should coerce people! That's why I should control everyone! They don't know what's best for them! Only I do! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!

And I'll tell you what, we'll forget about the fact that the state is dependent upon the private sector, not the other way round! We'll forget that it is the 'private sector' as us intellectuals like to call it that produces, whereas the state merely consumes. I have a right to just consume! I am so educated, wise and intellectual and philosophical after all! We'll just keep on sitting in this fake, coercive island created by taxation, enjoying it and wishing one day it may become 100% taxation. But hang on, how would that work? Ohh! It wouldn't. Ah well, never mind!

[threadbear]

Hooray Macsporan, Give it to him. I love the part about immigrants coming to the New World because of the high standard of living.

Jaws, Do you have any idea what kind of rank, filthy place people stepped into after they exited Ellis Island? My God, if it weren't for unions raising the general standard of living, we'd still be living in filthy conditions in dark slums. There is nothing worse than the absolute tyranny of capitalism, without checks and balances. To suggest otherwise reflects an innocence that is rather surprising.

[cheRand]

I'm noticing a couple of things and wondering how these figure in the discussion:

1. Economics is usually based on the assumption of growth and expansion, as if we can forever convert nature's $3 Trllion dollar bounty. But Peak Oil is a limiting factor on that expansion.

2. Free market economics isn't a good analogy. Food systems are intrinsically "owned" at strategic leverage points, by a handful of major players. Just try to grow and sell your own CAFO full of chickens or hogs, and you'll find that processing and distribution are a family affair. The Federal Trade Commission doesn't ask "Is this a monopoly?" It only asks, "Is this a monopoly that interferes with ultimate consumer pricing?" You can have a monopoly now. You can pull the strings on the Energy Bill or the Farm Bill and narrow the playing field. It's.... encouraged. Its bartered for politics. So globalization is one of the perks of corporate power. Colonization of nations, sort of.

Would you agree to these points? If so, the rules have changed. New Rule: Get global dominance now, because its all shrinking. Access and markets both.

[jaws]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Macsporan', 'Y')es I am. Did any of the early economists condemn it?