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Re: Re: Re: Let history be your guide
TB — (archived)

I haven't really overlooked anything. And I can make my point just with the past century.

How many of the examples you give of private sector abuses are free markets in action, and how many were companies or other entities using the power of government to do things no private company could do on its own? You pointed out the East India Company.

Could private farmers and miners on their own have taken land so easily from the Native Americans by force? Or did it require cronyism with a government that had an army at its disposal? How many real merchant princes relied on exclusive royal charters or franchises to maintain a monopoly? Do any of these actions reflect free market principles? Would a law outlawing all computers except Apple computers be a free market action?

As for the historical abuses of businesses and states: A hundred million people were murdered by Communist regimes alone during the past century or so. Not even counting other statist regimes.

This is more than the entire pre-European native population of the whole New World. Possibly by a factor of two.

How many coal miners were killed or kept in bondage during the Gilded Age, regarded as the prime era of the worst of capitalism? During that Gilded Age, were people trying to get into the U.S., or out of it? From where? And how were those nations run? What happened to U.S. living standards during that time? How did those living standards, even then, compare to those in later communist nations?

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