It is interesting the OPEC Nations and the cartel, which affects the
quality of our daily lives, personal success, the number of people who
can enter our middle class, and all of our businesses and industries
including your job. In our country we have rules about monopolies that
we enforce on every large super heavy weight business in every industry.
A recommended read would be the book on Rockefeller. If you have
already read that book then you understand the remaining points and why
we bring up the importance of flow and we are discussing it and
comparing it to OPEC. Rockefeller was beholden to the market place and
the supply and demand issues of the day. If his price got too far out of
line, then others would jump into the game. OPEC constantly screws with
our supply, much worse than the anti-trust issues of yester year.
If
it is okay today for OPEC to play these games then certainly
Rockefeller did nothing wrong, as a matter of fact, I have never heard
of such an important concept such as Anti-Trust, which has so little
reality based thinking and has undergone so few changes in the past 200
years. With all the ridiculous patch work within is regulations it
throws out the entire idea of capitalism and competition. The laws are
vague, utterly preposterous and reward the weak. The notion that bigness
is automatically evil, dangerous to the welfare of free men or bad for
the society as a whole makes no sense in a free market economy. The
attack on Gate's Microsoft, by the FTC, after the people choose them and
bought their products and continually wait until the next windows
upgrade is beyond me. People vote with their dollar, they chose a
company that fulfills their desires, purchase products and services from
that company and this is bad? It appears that the FTC only attacks the
visionaries and market winners. Well it must be something like that.
Competitors who lose in the market place (Sand Box) go crying to momma
or the liberal teacher of academia and liberal media?
Then
at the same time when companies want to merge to share costs and use
the efficiencies to get maximum use of the economies of scale they are
forced into a box of questionable divestitures, all of which end up
making the merger less of a good deal as it would have been and all
these costs are past onto the consumer who would have had the greatest
benefits in the long run. Yes that is right the very consumer that the
FTC is sworn to protect. I give this example due to all the Tiger Marts,
which closed after the Chevron Texaco merger. All the jobs lost and the
hardship of customers to find a place to fuel up causing longer lines
and therefore more demand and therefore higher prices, check the
statistics if you disagree. Great so now you have high fuel prices, long
lines and you are to thank the FTC for protecting you? From what, they
caused it.
The theory that Monopolies, which started small and
grew big due to the consumer choosing them over the competition is a
testament of a strong free market system with tough competition forcing
the best athlete forward for the gold metal and is merely survival of
the fittest. It is about the most natural thing mankind has created. If
growing big is evil then and anti-trust laws are to be enforced upon
bigness then the entire government, by the people and for the people
should be immediately shut down, because it was voted for by us, we
chose it over other forms of government and it is friggin huge, talk
about out of control with regulations. This alone would make it ready
for anti-trust lawsuits, with it's finger on the flow of everything and
in the colon fudge cake of everyone, every company and obviously up
there own. You are looking for a retraction, doubtful if you would get
one from someone who studies the flow and the cogs in the wheels of
commerce, no apologies here, I am absolutely serious because a complete
overhaul is needed. It is a complete joke, only it is NOT funny, because
we are talking about the future of the greatest nation in the world and
the rest of the planet's future depends on our example to follow in the
next time one following this present period. Let's look at this from a
distance.
When our Oil Companies here in the US wish to merge to
create the economies of scale to compete, they go through 18 months of
regulatory review and every congressman wants to go up to the podium to
tell us what they think (actually why we should keep voting for them).
Then these same oil companies are told they must divest themselves of
certain pipelines, retail outlets, subsidiaries, trading rooms, etc. The
consumer gets a better price when these larger companies can compete
with the Cartels and can deliver for less. We force them to go offshore
and own interests in the cartels to stay competitive.
Our stock
market, your mother's 401K and father's pension do better when
subsequent market sectors are more efficient and profitable. Especially
those involving large industry and when the flow of fuel has profitable
years and decades, steady growth in the market helps the strength of our
nation. It is interesting that we allow foreign competitors more
latitude than our own companies and then we create a hostile environment
in the regulatory bureaucracy and cause our companies to move jobs,
factories, refineries, etc to those same foreign lands. One might have
to ask exactly whose team are we on? Let's face it, the growth of a
business from small to large is a testament of commitment and hard work
by the team running that company and their value to the consumer and my
friends that is merely survival of the fittest and best prepared to take
advantage of opportunities to serve the desires of the customers. Just
like the republic or Democracy government voted into power by the people
is a sign of the strength, trust and will of the people.
John D
Rockefeller was a great man and delivered fuel to the people and enabled
us to move the ball forward as we modernized our civilization.
