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From: fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Supposed monopolies: AT&T
Message-ID: <10166@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 23-Aug-85 17:14:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10166
Posted: Fri Aug 23 17:14:06 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 00:14:45 EDT
References: <9563@ucbvax.ARPA> <1106@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: fagin@ucbvax.UUCP (Barry Steven Fagin)
Followup-To: net.politics.theory
Organization: University of California at Berkeley
Lines: 68
Xref: watmath net.politics:10616 net.politics.theory:977
Summary: What is coercion, anyway?  And what is Charley trying to say?

>> Me
> Charley Wingate
>
>>These independent companies, no fools they, reliazed that mutual
>>cooperation was crucial if any were to survive, and organized a national
>>association in 1897 to establish long distance serivce between their
>>cities.  (Note that this is exactly the sort of thing that supposedly
>>can't happen without coercion).
>
>Isn't the threat of being forceably put out of business coercion?
>

No, it is not.  This question has been raised often on the net; perhaps
it's worth another look.  Putting someone out of business, if it does not 
involve acts of violence or fraud, is not coercion.  It is simply charging lower
prices and/or offering better goods in an attempt to change the economic
behavior of third parties.  Consider two people who want to sell you
widgets.  For whatever reasons, you habitually purchase widgets from
A.  Then, one day, you notice that B is selling better widgets for
10% less than A, or that B's store is air conditioned, or something that
makes you change your mind and start buying widgets from A.  Has coercion
occured?  Surely the answer is no.  You made a decision as a free human
being to control your actions according to your will.

Now multiply this scenario by N buyers, and M sellers, then reenact it.
Has coercion occured?  Most who accept your definition would say yes,
at least for certain values of N and M.  But how did the coercion
creep into things?  At what point did it happen?  Are there critical
numbers of buyers and sellers that make economic activities coercive,
below which they are not? Clearly further discussion along this line 
is absurd.

The reason this is so important in political discourse is that twisting
"coercion" to include the results of the economic transactions of third
parties implies that coercion is in turn justified in influencing these
transactions.  In my opinion, interventionists reason backward: they
want coercion to be justified in influencing economic transactions, so 
they define coercion to include economic transactions.  I believe 
libertarians, by contrast, are not guilty of the same crime; by accepting their 
definition of "coercion", one is not forced (:-) to accept self-evidently absurd
propositions that follow from it.

Later on ...

>> [My examples of how the government became involved in the telephone 
>> industry]
>
>Bringing us again to the $64 question: what is going to prevent this from
>happening in Libertaria?
>

Now Charley, you're not playing fair.  You're original claim was:

>>>The historical [record] rather plainly shows that markets tend to drift away 
>>from perfect
>>>competition towards monopolies and oligopolies as a result of natural
>>>forces, unless there are restraining forces to oppose this.  

When I attempt to refute this with examples, you shift gears and assert
instead that the *political* forces that lead to monopolies and
oligopolies are inevitable, even in Libertaria.  This claim is *very* different 
from your original one.  I'll address it in another posting to 
net.politics.theory.

--Barry

-- 
Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley