>>I don't think I said government is ( or at least should be ) incompetant to legislate a level playing field - only incompetant to legislate a tie score. Equality of opportunity is a worthy goal. Equality of outcome is neither possible nor, perhaps, desirable.
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>>If anti-trust legislation is used to penalize the successful after the less successful have decided it is cheaper to buy judges than to invest in better business methods, the system is abused.
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>We have a system right now where without anti-trust legislation, we will be faced, in very little time, with a very few monopolies. How can that be a good thing? The big fish swallows the little fish. That may be acceptable in a human terms in a Darwinian system where smarts can work in the little fish's favour, but in an economic system, it becomes little more than a path to megalopolies (I may have just invented that word. I'm not sure). In a corporate system, if the big fish sees a smarter little fish, the big fish just applies various pressures (including buyout) to simply get rid of the little fish.
>

But is it the job of the government to create an environment in which if you start a car company in your back yard you are guaranteed not to be driven out of business by large companies who make better cars? Now if those large companies collude to deny you resources by threatening suppliers with loss of business if they sell to you, that is justly regulated.

But government should not be in the business of ensuring your success any more than the ref should award you a basket for coming close because you are only 5'2" and have never played before.


>MOst of us are not happy with the OPEC consortium (which would probably be illegal here), but you seem to be saying it's ok.
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The OPEC is not regulated by anything. It is a combination in restraint of trade. ( of course all oil producing nations don't belong ) But the biggest restraint on OPEC is that Saudis etc have so much investment in Western economy that completely wrecking it doesn't serve their interests. Shearing a sheep more profitable than selling mutton. ( with the Arabs there is always the difficulty that they seem to sometimes not act in their own self-interest - but that's another matter ) I do think that over the years there have been a few effective reminders that there is some recourse even from predatory cartels - the 82nd Airborne for example <s>


>I just don't understand the part about the gov legislating a level playing field without tinkering with the system. Are you advocating dumping anti-trust legislation?
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Of course not. I am only saying there is a difference between the 1911 trust-busting legislation that broke up Standard Oil and the Microsoft suit. Predatory practices in business are not necessarily evil - or at least the kind of thing government should be involved in sanctioning. If you get into an industry early, are successful and establish market dominance, is that inherently a sign that you need to restrained so other people have a chance?

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>>If the government "decrees" that 2+2= 4 or 5 so people who have difficulty in math don't feel 'marginalized' it is not particularly a good outcome. ( there is a story - probably apocryphal - that the Indian state legislature once considered a bill to make pi = 3 in order to make math easier for students. )
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>>But there is a limit to what legislative remedy can do. Contracts can be enforced, but if someone contractually does something stupid and then expects to be rescued they are asking for a tilt of the table by the government.
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>Unfortunately, the major players do this all the time. Governments are filled with corrupt people, and probably always will be.
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But that is just why government shouldn't be just another lever to be pushed by those with power. Regulation is always promoted as something to protect "the consumer" when in fact it is paid for by the major players and is shaped by lobbyists. It just makes life more complicated for everyone and so complex that the real intention - to use government to protect the interests of those who pay for "the best government money can buy" - obfuscated. Look at the tax code for a clear example.

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>>In sports, you don't allow the refs to fiddle the rules to make the game closer. But in government people are always proposing the government legislate remedies that will guarantee equal outcome. However well meaning, most of those efforts suffer from the hubris that we actually know how to tinker with mechanisms that are too complex to be adjusted with ham-handed solutions.
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>>Then more tinkering is needed to fix the fix and so on.
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>>The best stuff that came out of the Great Society resulted in tearing down legal barriers to equality - the Voting Rights act for example. But the stuff that didn't work - court ordered busing for example - was certainly well-intended but tried to accomplish something by fiat that had unintended consequences ( the destruction of many inner cities )
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>How would you go about 'tearing down the barriers' to competition, while still allowing a situation in which a small upstart company could survive (assuming you actually have done away with the barriers to allowing successful companies to pretty much do as they please (not counting criminal activities) in order to grow).

The trick is not to erect the barriers in the first place an not to assume government is going to fix your - or anyone else's - life. Small upstart companies survive all the time - though they more often fail. A small upstart company has no God given right to survive. Just because I want to start a record label doesn't mean the government should tell Sony they have play nice with me. I do not have a god-given right to have the government prevent Microsoft from duplicating the functionality of my software product in the their next release. I may not like that, but I like even less the idea that government decides what I can or can't do with the business I've invested in. Suppose that there was legislation saying that you couldn't sell out to MS? Remember, when Ashton Tate couldn't out engineer Fox Software they went to the government to try to squash the competition.

I grant you the trend is toward consolidation of power in a lot of industries or service segments of the economy. That is the nature of free economies. But consolidation is often the result of weaker players being absorbed by more successful ones. Would they be better off to just fail outright? There are a lot of millionaires from Microsoft's practice of buying off the competition ( one of them collects violins <g> )