david vartanoff Wrote:
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> "free market" monopoly at its best could also
> be termed economic treason

What exactly is a "free market" monopoly? An oxymoron?

The market for transportation isn't an "auction market" for corn with all sellers having the "same" corn to sell with few barriers to entry. So many of those simplistic Econ 101 notions like homogenous product being offered by many buyers to many sellers, don't really apply to transportation economics.

Every geographic route between any two points is inherently "unique" to the geographic conditions that route encounters. The three factors affecting the most optimal, and thus most advantageous and efficient route, are time, distance, and gravity... or in the case of railroads the fastest, shortest, and lowest gradient route, which determine operating costs and thus the most efficient and thus, the most inherently profitable route. This "monopoly" on the most efficient route will lead to that carrier having an inherent "lower cost" competitive advantage over others.

Unlike the simple corn market with many buyers and sellers, and the ability to attract more competition, as the price of corn rises, due to the "barriers to entry" from the high cost of building a competitive route, true "free market" competition is inherently more difficult to achieve. And, the existing carrier may drop their rates to undercut the new competitor... Once you have built the most optimal route, you have a monopoly on that route.

This fact has lead to many abuses, because this has lead to things like market dominance, discriminatory pricing, and monopoly pricing, that can extract above a "free (and truly competitive) market" rates of return. These abuses are what ultimately drove us to regulation in the 1890's, to prevent "monopolistic" and "predatory" market dominance...

Now, if you mean the Ayn Rand "free market" dogma and horse crap that passes for supposed "free market" "capitalism", which has dismantled our consumer protections against these abuses, and allowed these unrestrained mergers, and you actually like real true "competitive" "free market" Adan Smith "capitalism", then yeah, "economic treason" is probably the right description.

Deregulation of competition, is fine, if you maintain real competition. But, if you don't enforce anti-trust laws, and allow anti-competitive mergers, which allow companies to dominate markets, then you no longer really have a "free (or competitive?) market" do you? So we've effectively now managed to "deregulate" away real competition, under the guise of "free markets" dogma (that really isn't...)... It's bulls#it, of course, and it's bad for you, as a shipper and a consumer.

Even worse, we've "deregulated" and diluted the laws of contract and fiduciary responsibility, too...you know that thou shall not lie/shall not steal bit... In this brave new world, it's nowadays increasingly the law of the jungle. This is the new "caveat emptor" or "tough s#it" we have a monopoly and power and we don't care, f##k you oligopolistic model. Which is another product of atheistic amoral Ayn Rand line of "free market" horse crap... And, as we've seen at Boeing and Wells Fargo... what can possibly go wrong...?

What is truly frightening, is that even when these kind of abuses, go over into actual criminal behavior, and these folks are caught, red handed committing 3 million counts of identity theft, bank fraud, lying to regulators, lying to accident investigators, engaging in stock fraud, deceiving their stockholders, and even second degree murder for profit, that no one is even indicted....

Because, in today's America, we apparently now have the "best gubmint" that money can buy....