Personal accountability is all well and good, but how about when government limits our choices to what we see as healthy? I'm thinking of all who have to buy raw milk illegally, not to mention the state with a ridiculous law that would make it illegal for a cow owner to drink raw milk from his own cow?

In this case it's Big Dairy colluding with government to limit choice and "risk" and, as a by-product, drive the small, organic farmers out of business.

Our family can't digest pasteurized milk -- pasteurization destroys the enzyme in the milk that allows us to digest the milk protein. I finally gave up on raw milk because it's just too hard to get.

So Big Dairy didn't gain us as a customer... they just drove us to making our own nut and coconut milk.

It's my understanding that Big Dairy' s lobbying efforts ($$$) were a big part of it.

And..... the above discussion sums up why corporations aren't held accountable for harming health or misleading customers. Because we don't think they should be held accountable (speaking for some of us). Anything goes when it's to earn a buck. The right to earn profits trumps the responsibility of providing safe products, that are adequately labelled and do what it's supposed to do.

I'm very much Libertarian minded. I don't think it's the job of government to protect us and micromanage our lives. BUT corporations that harm people or misrepresent their products should also not be protected by the governments that WE ELECT and support with our tax dollars.

Remember the melamine poisoning of infant formula in China and how China dealt with the people responsible? Well, that's what should happen over here too. Instead you and me are expendible and corporate profits are protected.

You misunderstand me. I think it's a damn shame that people don't pay attention. But they only don't pay attention because they assume that government is getting their back. Well, government does not, has not, and will not ever, get anyones back except their own (and their benefactors). In a free society, that is to say one where there was no FDA, independent companies would exist to keep an eye out on things. Think Consumer Reports for food manufacturers. And people wouldn't just assume that since something is on the shelf then it must be ok. Now if something is on the shelf, people think it must be ok otherwise government would have straight up outlawed it. Rarely is that the case.

As for governments regulating corporations... Well, that's a ridiculous notion. As I pointed out earlier, there are 12,000 lobbyists in Washington. You can bet that the politicians know where their bread is buttered.

An unfortunate side effect of a free market economy in the real world is that a given industry, especially if it had high barriers to entry or very limited resources, is pretty much destined to become a monopoly. Government tries to pass laws to keep that from happening, but you still end up with oligopolies consisting of the handful of remaining players. The computer industry is a prime example of this, where you only have AMD/ATI and nVidia/Intel for desktop computer processors and graphics chipsets, because of the high barriers to entry, patent minefield, and very limited supply of highly skilled knowledge workers, and I'm rather certain that the only thing keeping the two companies from merging is the anti-monopoly laws (the same laws that busted them for colluding to raise graphics card prices for years).

This happens because only one company have the best people, and once those best people come up with something that provides an advantage over the other company, you start reaching a tipping point where the competitor can no longer keep up (because it takes more money to come up with a counter solution, and the competitor is losing market share to the other), thus falling farther and farther behind. One by one, the competitors fall or get bought, until only the minimum (allowed by law) is left (if possible, though sometimes full monopolies still arise - utilities, state liquor stores in some states, the MPAA, etc).

It seems like we're in a circular argument. It is the government that allows certain things to happen and prevents others. Those decisions are driven by the dollars coming from the lobby, which is funded by the companies we choose to buy our food from. It really only stops being circular when you A) stop buying their crap and don't vote for the asshats that pass bad consumer laws.

As for sources, most people live within an hour of a farm (even if you live in a huge city - http://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html). And many local farms do delivery to the metro areas they are close to. Or you can always order via the Internet. Not optimal, it costs more, but your dollars don't go to the companies you don't want to do business with.

Everyone has a choice. They just have to be willing to make the commitment.

It seems you and I may be using different definitions of the word "monopoly." The one that I use is "a monopoly exists when a specific individual or an enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition for the good or service that they provide and a lack of viable substitute goods." There is no need for the government to grant such status to an organization for it to exist (I never once denied the existence of government sanctioned/appointed monopolies - in fact, that was my point when I mentioned utilities and whatnot in situations where monopolies still arise - because they do exist, but such sanctioning is not required). Also, this is slightly different from Mises' and Rand's "evil monopoly" or oppressive monopoly, because a real-world monopoly won't necessarily set a price high enough to invite competition (thanks to game theory principles). Additionally, there has never been a monopoly in a truly free market, because a truly free market has never existed, because the human factor flaws the ideal in the implementation.

Google rose to power because its primary domain is on the Internet, which has pretty much zero barrier to entry. The companies that I used as examples are not Internet based companies, but companies that work very much in real-world commodities (ATI/AMD and nVidia/Intel). Additionally, Google did not originally directly compete with Microsoft, Apple, or IBM. In the 90s (when Google started), those three companies were primarily in the hardware and operating system domain. Everything else they did (web search, web browsers, etc) was secondary, if it existed at all at the time. Google was solely a search engine in the beginning. Of the other three, they were only slightly competing with MSN, who had also just released a search engine. Google's primary competitors at the time were not Microsoft, Apple, or IBM, but rather Lycos, Yahoo, and Ask Jeeves (and AOL search when they went public). It's only been relatively recently that it's competed with the companies you mentioned (and even then, only in relatively small, and arguably tangential to their core competencies, divisions).

There's a very specific reason that I specifically stated that oligopolies and monopolies arise in free market economies in industries with high barriers to entry and limited resources, because those are the determining factors of the odds of the competitors ultimately becoming a monopoly or oligopoly. Limited resources means that there's only so much to go around, and as demand goes up, so do prices (hey look! I do know a thing or two about economics!).

Let's say you start with ten companies that do the same thing - make CPUs. They all start out on roughly equal level.

Players 1, 3, 5, and 7 come up with different breakthroughs that sell more, making them more money. This means Players 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10 lose market share and, therefore, money. With all the competition from this industry and others (and the increased demand from the successful players), the prices for silicon, copper, and gold (three resources needed for electronics manufacturing) increase.

Players 8 and 10 decide to run at a deficit to find and make a new product. They find it, and the breakthrough allows them to get out of debt and pull ahead of the others. Players 2, 4, 6, and 9 played more conservatively, but continue to lose market share (and, therefore, revenue and profits).

Players 2 and 4 decide to merge (becoming 2a). Player 1 buys Player 9. Raw materials prices stay roughly the same, but are high enough to prevent some new players from coming in. Players 11 and 12 join while the other barriers to entry is still rather low. Number of players: 10

Player 11 finds a game-changing breakthrough and buys 12 and 2a. Player 3 counters with an equal breakthrough released later that year and finds similar success. Players 5 and 7 merge (becoming 5a). Number of players: 7.

The cycles of breakthroughs, buying, and merging continues for several years. Some new players join, but are eventually bought by existing players as raw materials cost rise, as the demand for more knowledge rises, and as Moore's Law turns over a few times and physical size, and heat, limits start getting reached on the current architecture. Players 1, 5, 8, and 11 are left. Player 20 rises up in a separate, but related sector. Player 5 sees this new sector as a lucrative opportunity to branch out and does so. They sink a good deal of money into it and start seeing enough return that they can drop the prices of their primary product to that it barely makes any profit, in a move to drive other competition out of that market. The other players choose other routes of saving money and advancing the technology. Number of Players: 4 (+1 in a related sector)

A few more cycles go through, and Player 5 has succeeded in bankrupting, and taking over, Players 1 and 8. Player 11 has also seen that Player 20's sector is on the rise - and sees that without some breakthrough in how CPUs are made, the current conditions will bankrupt the company - and decides to buy them for a hefty price. Number of Players: 2

The primary sector still has high demand, and now that most of the competition is gone, both remaining Players raise prices slightly in order to provide more revenue for further advancement of the secondary sector and to keep R&D up for the primary, but not enough to tempt new players.

From here, things can go a number of different directions, depending on government, economic prowess of the Players, resources, etc.

The first option is what Mises assumes will happen in all cases - one Player will buy or bankrupt the other, then jack up the price to the point that new players come into the game (the "evil monopoly"). This very well can, and does, happen (though there is the pretty glaring footnote that until someone can get into the game and become a true threat to the status quo, there is still a monopoly situation - such as what happened with Internet Explorer until Mozilla was able to get a foothold as the rules of the game itself changed).

However, the very fact that it's known to happen means that it won't happen in all real-world cases, because monopolies aren't inherently evil, and the Players will change their tactics to prevent that from happening (this is where game theory comes into play). Instead, they'll do other things:

1. Bankrupt or buy the other Player, but don't jack up the price enough to tempt new players. Regardless of whether they get complacent, the revenue margin for a new Player to be competitive isn't high enough to be able to feasibly enter the game without taking a huge risk. At that point, the only ones that can compete are giants from other industries, who have other ways of funding. Whether this is good for the consumers is a mixed bag and depends entirely on what happens in the aftermath. (This is more or less what happened with Microsoft and Apple in the desktop market, though the comparison is imperfect, because it didn't completely bankrupt Apple and they were able to come back into the desktop market once they got their foot in the door in the handheld device arena. Regardless, the price of Windows and Windows computers, despite being the controlling option on the market, did not have prices that were that much different from the times where there is viable competition, because Microsoft didn't jack up the prices that much.)

2. The Players can cooperate with each other and collude on prices of the products and/or the resources. This keeps the illusion of competition intact (and perhaps a small amount of actual competition), while still ensuring a command of the resources for the market, preventing new players from joining. For the consumer, the two Players are different, but their methods and product are essentially the same. (See also: Nash Equilibrium, Prisoner's Dilemma, and Stag Hunt) This is exactly what ATI and nVidia have historically done, and were both sued for in 2008 (GPU Antitrust Litigation).

3. The Players can work together, or one can bankrupt the other, and jack the price up enough to bring in new players, then engage in tactics to forcibly eliminate those players through one means or another.

4. The Players can choose to not cooperate with each other at all and still compete as though there were other competitors. The odds are good, though, that this would result in them both going bankrupt (as they try to funnel R&D money into the product to outpace the other) and getting bought by companies from other sectors. (The usual outcome of the Prisoner's Dilemma - both defect and both end up with the longer sentence, in an effort to get the higher reward of going free.) However, there is a chance that one or both could succeed in staying in business and essentially reaching an equilibrium. (The "both defect" option of Stag Hunt.)

Additionally, Mises' theory isn't the only way to break a monopoly, nor is government intervention. The game itself can change in such a way that it opens up to new Players. The Browser Wars are a prime example of the rules of the game itself changing. Microsoft was able to bankrupt Netscape, because browsers, at the time, carried a dollar value and were installed via disk. Microsoft, themselves, changed the game (thus "winning") when they bundled IE with Windows. However, as the Internet matured to the point that download several megabytes of data became feasible, the game changed again, and allowed the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation to release Firefox and break the monopoly of IE6. Microsoft attempted to undermine Mozilla using similar tactics to what were successful against Netscape, but failed due to the free/non-profit/open source nature of Firefox.

Regardless of what happens, the above is what can happen in any free market economy, even absent government intervention (for good or ill of the economy). Yes, patent law can make monopolies happen more easily by raising barriers to entry, however, I also specifically mentioned that in conjunction with real world free markets - i.e. the ones that are actually in place, complete with government laws that they have to deal with. They may not be perfect laizze-fair free markets, but a perfect free market (free of government regulation) does not exist in the real world. As such, patents and other laws are, therefore, part of the reason that "free market" systems (because you are correct, they aren't truly free, and are probably better described as interventionist markets, or at least interventionist-leaning markets), as they are implemented, are flawed. The ideal of a free market is far more robust than the actual implementations.

Why is it that the actual implementations are flawed, even when the theory is robust? And why is it that Mises' outcome is only one of many? Because we're human. Humans are not solely rational beings, and neither are we solely self-interested opportunistic. We're also not perfect (and, therefore, don't always have a perfect picture of the path that is in our best interests). Because of this, we'll do things for reasons other than rationality or self-interest. That's what it's all about. Mises' outcome assumes that the monopoly company will take the purely opportunistic route of increasing the price to get as much money as the demand will allow. However, other options exist that are rational, but not entirely opportunistic or self-interested. Sharing the market in an oligopoly is rational, but not fully self-interested. After all, you have to share the market, and therefore, cannot generate as much revenue as if you were alone. However, it is still somewhat self-interested, in that it maintains the status quo with regard to new players, and allows many of the monopolistic benefits with fewer of the risks.

Likewise, even consumers make decisions based on reasons other than rationality or self-interest. Ethical reasons (which are at least sometimes rational, but not necessarily self-interested in an efficiency and resource-maximizing sense) are a huge factor in consumer decisions, and such decisions can only affect the corporations if there are enough consumers making the same decision, so in a large enough population, it's not necessarily rational or self-interested for the company to change their ways based on some consumers' ethical decisions.

And, finally (once again), does any of the above necessarily make a company "evil"? No. Is the company going to, by default, do things that run counter to maintaining its status? Not likely, but possible, all depending on the individuals who are running and directing the company. Does any of the above mean free markets are bad? Not at all. Does it mean they're not robust? Certainly not. The free market economy, even when the implementation is flawed, is more robust than most of the alternatives we've come up with (there is argument that a deliberate blend of free market with carefully-considered government oversight could be more robust, but that is a discussion for a different forum).

That said, I'm not interested in debating the ideals of a free market. I stated what I did based on the implementation of such markets. If you want to debate the implementation (ie - the state of the "free" market as it exists in the real world/interventionist market, be it in the US or elsewhere), by all means. Debating the ideal, however, will likely result in a circular debate that probably won't get anywhere, regardless of who (if anyone, after all, we're all human and, therefore, are not omniscient) is "right."

http://faculty.lebow.drexel.edu/mccainr/top/eco/p/freemarket.html (Written by Roger McCain - http://www.lebow.drexel.edu/academics/departments/economics/faculty/rogermccain )
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=344352 (interesting discussion regarding monopolies in the free market, and TheStatutoryApe holds largely the same views that I do and seems to be better able to explain)

http://youtu.be/-q1fSNzYNhg

http://youtu.be/76pWdExqfkY