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Originally Posted by qprogeny79
without delving too far into politics yet again . . . coercive monopolies can only occur under a system that allows government regulation. one company might have a de facto monopoly under laissez-faire at any given time, but that does not preclude companies who make a better product or have a more effective marketing strategy from coming in and gaining market share even with a behemoth as competition. on the other hand, with the force of the government behind it a corporation can essentially do whatever it wants to bully competitors out of business -- all it would need to do is appeal to congress to, er, regulate its competitors out of any chance of profitability. and the only way it can do that is to pour a zillion dollars into congressional campaign funds . . . see below.
the only companies that would want government favors under laissez-faire are the ones that are having the shite beaten out of them by the competition. if we didn't allow that the mediocre companies would fail (as the market says they should) and we would be left only with the successful companies, who again would have no reason to pour funds into the coffers of politicos so long as they didn't negatively interfere with their affairs by . . . er, regulating their business.
so yeah, different strokes.
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True, but allowing business to line congressional pockets with money is a laissez-faire attitude in itself.
As I recall, before good ol' TR the economic system of the US was very laissez faire and it had a ton of problems. The train, oil, and steel industries were disgusting, and progressivism alleviated that. The problem was that progressivists didn't know when to stop and ended up hurting those industries a lot.