--WhfpMioaduB5tiZL
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 09:59:10PM +0900, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 19 Apr 2009, at 09:29, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >An HMO wouldn't exist in a free market, because "free market"  
> >implies the
> >necessary absence of governmental intervention causing the existence  
> >of a
> >corporation to be possible.  Corporations are, by definition, legal
> >"persons" -- something that sure as shit doesn't exist without someone
> >with a bunch of guns going around making sure everybody plays along.
> >That doesn't sound very "free" to me.
> 
> The whole point of Joint Stock Companies in the first place was to  
> create and maintain legal trade monopolies, and as we see at every  
> turn any market system which places undue reliance upon them as the  
> foundation of a "free" market becomes heavily distorted. However even  
> large corporations are bounded by the laws of thermodynamics and will  
> eventually fail, which of course is what a bubble crash such as the  
> current one is supposed to achieve. Unfortunately governments insist  
> on bailing out failing corporations when they're sufficiently  
> politically influential and that exacerbates matters in the long term:  
> just look at the disastrous history of nationalised industries in the  
> UK...

. . . or Venezuela, the Middle East, et cetera.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Scott McNealy: "Microsoft is now talking about the digital nervous
system.  I guess I would be nervous if my system was built on their
technology too."

--WhfpMioaduB5tiZL
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.10 (FreeBSD)

iEYEARECAAYFAknwvz0ACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKWWhQCgzSJ3sCes5LvaWMVgH2BUoE00
DDIAniNOmqJfy2Ev4ed7eTQ2iKjmt2mc
2+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--WhfpMioaduB5tiZL--