[P2P-F] Ordoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Kevin Carson]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 3:16 PM, Paul Hughes <psidoc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Based on my understanding of Kevin Carson and company's writings, this
> argument seems wrong.  How could a company obtain monopoly power
> without it's ability to use the *state* legal system to enforce its
> monopoly?  Minus onerous (and unenforceable) patents and copyrights,
> it seems that a genuine free market of highly diverse and
> decentralized players would all be playing economic games with each
> other. Without patents or copyrights being enforced through force (by
> the state or nakedly by wanna-be oligarchs or neofedualists),
> cooperative peer production would (ironically) out-compete mere
> "competition".  I can see no way that any state, no matter how well
> intentioned, can't be captured at some point. The result is a modified
> legal code that favors certain players over others, eventually
> reaching the end-state of a unified corpocracy.

>From what I've seen, the overwhelming bulk of state regulation has
been to foster monopoly rather than break it up.  Even when fairly
liberally pursued, antitrust law has only been used to make sure
oligopolies don't turn into monopolies.  But the regulatory cartels
that make oligopoly itself feasible are fostered by the state.  There
wouldn't even be national manufacturing companies serving a nationwide
market, most likely, if not for the role of the railroad land grants
in creating a unified single market.  Consider the role of patents --
the pooling and exchange of them -- in cartelizing industries.
According to Gabriel Kolko, the primary motivation behind the
so-called Progressive Era regulatory state was a desire by the
regulated industries themselves to suppress competition.  The Clayton
Act's "unfair competition" provision actually made oligopoly markets
fairly stable and secure for the first time, by outlawing
destabilizing price wars that undermined cartels.  The FTC's body of
rulings through the 1930s actively encouraged price signalling devices
like the price-leader system, by classifying below-cost pricing and
dumping as unfair trade practices.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Research Associate, Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Desktop Regulatory State:  The Countervailing Power of Super-Empowered
Individuals http://desktopregulatorystate.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html