>My experience with free markets has been far from inevitable rising prices.
>Amazon and Walmart have pushed prices lower for a lot of stuff I buy.
>HEB supermarkets here in Texas are so cheap that other markets have given up.
>

Excellent point, Michael.
Your point about ATT is especially well taken. There probably would not have been an internet had that government supported monopoly stayed in place.



Yes, prices of lots of things have stayed the same or gone down. I can buy a golf ball now for $1, the same price I paid while learning the game as a kid and the ball is a lot better. That's because of technology.
Amazon and Walmart are great examples of the free market at work when the market is truly free and I buy from both of them regularly.

The problem is that some markets aren't truly free and the prices of some of things we buy have risen dramatically.
I was around when a gallon of gas cost $.40, the annual tuition at a good college was less than $1K and a visit to the MD cost $10. An overnight stay in a hospital cost $300.

When we look at some of the organizations producing these things we see defacto monopolies at work and many of them are supported by the government even as those running them decry government interference and bureaucracy.

I get a special kick out the conservative commentators on CNBC who bemoan the weight of government on business.
Well, CNBC is owned by Comcast, a huge cable operator and Comcast would disappear in the blink of an eye if its government imposed cable monopolies were to disappear. Comcast spends enough money lobbying the FCC and congress each year to feed a good sized army and it seems to have paid off based on the last ruling on net neutrality.
Comcast bought CNBC from GE, which makes a large portion of its profits from defense contracts.

Hospitals in the US are increasingly owned by conglomerates with monopolistic pricing power and a large amount of their profits from Medicare.
Bill Frist - who thought about running for president as a conservative, owns one.

Fox News is another. Think about how it's being broadcast while they spew that nonsense about free enterprise.
Ditto for all those free enterprise jocks on talk radio.

Oil companies are even worse. The government actually pays them with tax credits so that they can charge us more. It's also interesting to speculate about where Exxon Mobil might be today had the US fleet not been in the Persian Gulf for the past 5 decades.