henher3

Does anyone know any poems or poets who advocate freedom, self-esteem and/or happiness? For example, a poetic display of the free and healthy person would be interesting. Recently I saw Ron Paul linked to a list of movies with "libertarian messages" on facebook. Even though I am not sure I agree that the one movie I saw was all about libertarianism, I still enjoyed watching a movie that emphasized individual freedom and happiness. So I am wondering if anyone have had similar experiences in the domain of poetry. Feel free to just recommend some good poets or poetry in general as well, since I am new to the genre. Cheers!

I have heard the argument that there has never been a real monopoly without government involvement. However my friends have told me otherwise (although I cannot remember their exact examples), and a good friend of mine put forward the case why we need government regulation of business in order to avoid monopolies. I was wondering if you could help me evaluate his reasoning, so here goes. My friend used the example of an airline company in Norway-- which is a small country where you can fly most places within an hour on domestic flights-- in order to explain why regulation is needed. Let us say that airline company "X" does really well and becomes a really big company, and virtually drives out all competition on domestic flights. Then, my friend says, this company can charge high prices for a flight that used to be cheap. "Nonsense", I say, "then competitors will rush to the field and offer flights that are cheaper, which will attract consumers". Then my friend says that all this big powerful company has to do is to dump the prices until they drive their competitors out of business. They will be able to do this because of the surplus they have from being successful for some time. This way they can become monopolists by dumping the prices to such a low level that nobody can compete with them, whenever competition arises. When competitors again are out of the way, they can go back to their high prices. Thus, my friend says, we need government to regulate so that no company becomes big enough to do this. Have anyone encountered this "price dumping argument" for government regulation before? Or seen this happen in real life? Any good counter responses to this argument?

Thanks for the replies!Any examples of how Friedman was NOT a free market man?

Ayn Rand was very critical of Milton Friedman (for example in the q&a session in this YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoeOAxFcLbg).Does anyone know why she was so harsh when it came to Friedman? I have seen some interviews with Friedman and to me he seems to be in favour of a system resembling laissez-faire capitalism. Thus I wonder why Rand seems to have seen an enemy in Friedman.