LovePrevails

http://youtu.be/TK57RiMqTdk?t=2m55s

My leftie friend wants to debate with me on monopolies so I was just going to post some of his positions here to see if I could learn from you wizards. "Well the terminology and the theory aren't arbitrary and the historical evidence can be tapped into at any point, so ... I would suggest examining the new phrase which keeps coming up from the American end of the internet, "government granted monopoly". A lot of people are using this phrase as if only governments grant monopoly, or as if that's all governments do, or indeed, as if that is the only problem with the economy at all. None of this fits with any of the general understanding of what monopolies are or how they interact with the rest of the economy, so I suggest we take that phrase as the theme. What Monopoly Means and How it happens Acquisition Horizontal Acquisition - Competitors buy each other up to grab more of the market share. Vertical Acquisition – A company starts to occupy more of the supply chain, either from the production or the distribution side. Aggressive Competition – If Coke drive Pepsi out of business, they will monopolise the soda market and can set whatever prices and standards they want. This is effectively the same as Merging, because employees who lost their jobs, patents which just went on the market, factories which just went bust, will all get bought up by Coke if they’re any use. Expansion – I grab market share by opening new branches or franchising. The larger my market share, the less customer choice there is. Price Fixing – Competitors agree to keep sales prices high or their buying prices low. Tie-Ins – a competitor pays a supplier for exclusive supply of their product or service. This stuff happens all the time and you see it in the news every week. It happens among small, large and global businesses. You could call it all “government granted”, if by that you mean “It’s legal”. That doesn’t mean ‘Obama waved his scepter and gave away a piece of free-market to his cronies. Sometimes it’s happening like that, but please observe that all of these moves are textbook busuness strategies. Apple make Apple Stores instead of selling through mainstream outlets – vertical integration. Clarks Shoes build a Clarks Shoe soe factory – Vertical Integration. This is all very normal business strategy. Drug dealers cut out the middle man by buying in Aghanistan? - Vertical integration. Just taking unionization as a ubiquitous example, governments have often fought against unions, even with police brutality and army intervention. They don’t have a remote control over them. So unionization is only government granted (legal) bcause they often have no choice but to accept them. Many of these practices are effectively versions of each other. Likewise reducing one kind of monopoly automatically results in in another kind of monopoly by their competition. E.g., If you reduce union’s monopoly of the supply of labour, you grant management monopoly of jobs and salaries - exploitation. You can have one kind of freedom or the other. If oil companies forestall the production of high efficiency cars, (and they do,) that deprives the customer of that technology. The real issue here is whether the car producers see themselves as part of the car industry or the oil industry. If the oil industry can fore the government to raise trade tarrifs (and they often can, and they often do,) they can maintain their revenues. What am I saying? 1) First of all, there’s nothing ‘left-wing’ about any of this. It’s there in any economic dictionary or introductory textbook. Google it, Wiki it, there it is. 2) It’s only “government granted” in the sense that it’s legal. Now sometimes Bush or Obama do just wave their scepter and grant monopoly to one party or another. But if they allow unions or price fixing between competitors to exist, (even Marx called these a monopoly,) that doesn’t man they want it to exist. Governments often oppose all f these above listed phenomena. They’re only “government granted because the government has limited powers to prevent them. No way could they shut down unions or stop executives having drinks together and making deals. 3) There’s only so much ‘freedom” to go around between these factions and that limit is defined by what the customers will pay for the product or service. To the extent that you deprive one faction of a monopoly of that market, the remaining factions rush to absorb the rest. In this sense ‘monopoly’, means ‘market share’, but it also just means ‘money’ or ‘revenue’. 4) In no sense can you reduce monopoly by removing government interference. This kind of Ayn Rand science fiction appeals to a ‘live-free-or-die’ Some forms of monopoly, yes, are granted, indeed created by government. But likewise, the creation of new markets, as a very, very general point of historical fact, also involves the involvement of government. Name any market you like – cars, computers, cattle – and you’ll find the government allowing or supporting it, regulating it, funding technology research, choosing to police it or ignore it. We can trace this right from the earliest forms of writing in Sumerian conform, because one if the first uses of writing is accountancy. There never has been, in any society, at any point in history, a meaningful distinction between government and ‘legitimate competitive business’. Every market, like every monopoly, was created with government assent and support."

These skills are fundamental to having peaceful and productive relationships with others.

thanks for sharing good luck with your work

I like the IFS implications, I was instantly outraged by the misandry of inside the man's head

I've explained already why I am trying it, as a method of producing something that can go viral with shares and introduce a new audience to peaceful parenting. An audio without an animation will not have the capacity to do that, but I am doing it completely depending on whether there is enough appetite from supporters, so far I am about half of the way there.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hirsi-ali-slams-feminisms-trivial-bs/article/2556419

Hello friends at FDR - As you may know I run TheProgressiveParent youtube channel, which is completely non-profit and aims to provide resources to parents to help them do a better job including interviews with parenting experts and evidence-based podcasts on how to raise happy. healthy children who are in nurturing connective relationships with their caregivers. I am looking to put out a short video with a professional animation that can hopefully go viral and attract a slew of new subscribers who have never really considered peaceful parenting - before I post up a series of new interviews in the new year. It will cost about 140$ to get the animation done, would anyone would be willing to put in? I would love to be in the position to just chuck it all at it, but it is a non-profit channel and I am not overly abundant at the moment so I thought I'd ask for some help with a good cause.

Hey I will be visiting LA in January from Scotalnd and would love to meet some FDR people while I'm in the States if there is anyone kicking around!

Welcome to the community! Tell us a bit about your passions!

because you are not just challenging their opinions you are challenging their claim to victimhood, victimhood implies entitlement to additional privelleges: not just extra sympathy,empathy,compassion, but also restitution and often resources.

I think his voice box has gone Josh, if you listen to recordings of him from the 70s he speaks quite clearly

Hey please add me on facebook, Antony Sammeroff, I can invite you along to libertarian meet up groups in Edinburgh and Glasgow

I find it hard not to engage on certain issues despite my best interests and theirs

do you mean both voluntary ones? that has not been my experience, using NVC-like methods I find more effective in friendships and intimate relationships than standard approaches In the NVC worldview our wants derrive from our needs, it asks you to look at what needs underlie your wants and the wants of the person you are engaging with to give you several more options for getting your needs met than those you originally considered

NVC is a pretty good model for resolving conflict with people without provoking an excess of defensiveness. It provides means of diffusing resentment by connecting with the other persons feelings empathetically, showing you understand where they come from and inviting them to see it from your point of view and work together. Having said that it is a complicated model, often unweildy, and takes quite a bit to quite a lot of practice to use with any fluency. It makes it very hard to be direct without erring in using some degree of jackal language, for example an honest statement such as "I'm pissed off at you" is discouraged, you would be urged to use something like, "When you x I feel angry, because I need y, would you please z." One advantage of NVC is it is big on self-empathy, tuning into your own feelings and digging deeper to find the unmet needs that underlie those feelings. I found it very helpful in my personal development when I first discovered it but I don't practice it any more because I prefer to use a more direct approach, however some of its underlying principles have been internalised and help me in conflict situations and with my work. One thing to bear in mind is that it is just one model of communication, and like all models it has its advantages and disadvantages. People who are really really into NVC tend to see it as the all, and people who are against it seem to overlook any merits it may have.

crowdfunding paired with free bonuses for donators

the young Camilla