Antitrust Bill of Rights.... DJL's comments

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

  Date:  Thu, 6 Nov 1997 13:13:27 -0500 (EST)
  
  Posted for DLJ@POBOX.COM
  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  -----Original Message-----
  charles mueller writes:
  <
  
  >        Can a country have an effective antimonopoly policy if its
  >implementation and interpretation is put into the hands of its judges
  
  Now here is the basic anti-monopoly story -- it involves railroads which
  
  tend to be natural monopolies :
  
  Karl J. Immigrant settles on the prairies. His son turns queer. Then he
  goes
  into town and finds his daughter is putting it out on the corner. Then
  his
  wife runs away with the salesman from Sears Roebuck. A storm comes up
  and
  rips the roof off his house.
  
  What does he do?
  
  He goes out in the field in the wreckage of his life and he looks up in
  the
  sky so he can stare God in His face.  He shouts "God damn the CPR."
  
  For people who don't know, the CPR is the Canadian Pacific Railway,
  possibly
  the single most corrupt organisation ever created until the Kohl
  Christian
  Democrats bought the election of 1989 by calling Ossie and Wessie
  Deutschmarks equal in value. In the CNR case, they bought the election
  of --
  I forget the year, but it was Sir John A. MacDonald's second
  administration -- for a price of 300,000 pounds sterling. Serious money.
  
  Why can I be so light about "monopolies"?
  
  Look at the real situation: Karl J. Immigrant did not need the railway.
  He
  can go elsewhere. The Mormons, for instance, have simply gone of on
  their
  own and created a good and decent civilisation quite independent of out
  normal, monopoly ridden if you believe people like Mueller, society.
  (When
  the Mormons re-enter our society, it tends to be in banking, computation
  or
  national security.  They tend to be a little humourless for my taste,
  but
  they work hard and generally seem to turn in their work on time.)
  
  Let us assume a world owned by this apparently small -- 450 is the
  currently
  popular number -- of people. I know  some of them.  I'll give you the
  example of Iwasaki Hiroya (not the richest man I know, and some of my
  eldest
  daughter's friends really amaze me.) Mr Iwasaki  owns about three or
  five
  percent of the Mitsubishi operation, which means he's worth somewhere
  between five and  fifteen billion US dollars. Mitsubishi was basically
  created by his grandfather, and while their wealth depends on a whole
  bunch
  of wise and sensible things they did, plus a lot of hard work, their
  biggest
  hit was the earthquake of 1873, I think it was.  Old man Iwasaki was in
  England at the time and the staff sent his a telegram (over the newly
  established telegraph wires) saying "Horrible earthquake.  Everything
  destroyed."
  
  He signalled back: "Buy land."
  
                                                          * * *
  
  The rich, IMHO, tend to be people who have faith in the future, both of
  the
  proposition they're working on and of the people around them.
  
                                                               * * *
  
  When various morons talk about the world being controlled by a small
  number
  of people -- I mean really folks, ask yourself two questions:
  
  1.) Is a smart person like you under the control of some distant richie?
  
  2.) Why would all these richies want to get involved with running your
  life?
  
  OK?  I mean gimme a break, folks, and cut out all this stupid paranoid
  nonsense.
  
  
  -dlj
  ..