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For centuries the common law defined
"monopoly" as a governmental
grant to an individual or
enterprise to operate without any legal
competition. Government-sanctioned
monopoly was a key feature of European "mercantilism," the type of political/economic system that Adam Smith
railed against in his famous 1776 treatise, An
Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. So-called mercantilism was essentially a collection of
government policies, such as protectionist tariffs and government-sanctioned
monopolies, which benefited producers at the expense of consumers. Granting such favors to politically-connected businesses was
a way in which the European monarchs could share in the plunder of their citizens through kickbacks from the monopolists. Today these kickbacks go by various euphemisms, such as "campaign
contributions."
Of course, the worst of all monopolies is a government-run monopoly financed directly by tax dollars, for
the consumers’ refusal
to pay for the "services" of government monopolists can lead to the forceful
confiscation of one’s income
and property or prison (for tax
evasion). At least with most "private" government
franchise monopolies a consumer can
always say "no thanks, I’m not wasting my money; you can go play
in the traffic as far as I’m
concerned."
There is
no such thing as "free-market monopoly" and there never has been. The
notion of "free-market monopoly"
is especially ridiculous in today’s age of globalization, where competition can spring up from anywhere on the planet – as long as governments
do not interfere with the
free market by prohibiting
competition, as they often do in myriad ways. Monopoly has always been solely a creation of government.
In addition to being the sole source of monopoly
power, government is also a relentless propagandist in opposition to genuine
free-market competition. Its university systems are filled to capacity with poorly-educated anti-capitalist
ideologues of all sorts, including
thousands of "market
failure" economists who spend their
entire careers spinning tall tales of mathematical models that purport to define a "perfect" market. Having concocted such definitions they then matter-of-factly point out that, lo and behold, real-world markets "fail" to meet their definitions
of "perfection." This is known as "the Nirvana fallacy"
among free-market economists.
No such
perfectionist models of government are ever invented by the market failure economists for the obvious reason that government failures would appear to be many orders of magnitude worse than anything
that ever happens in the marketplace. For
example, the Ponzi scheme
known as "Social Security" is a thousand times worse than the most famous private
Ponzi scheme, the one pulled
off by Bernie Madoff. Madoff’s
rip-offs "only"
amounted to some $50
billion compared to trillions of dollars in
Social Security System rip-offs and swindles. And the Madoff scheme was not an example of the free market but
of criminal behavior.
That government
is always and everywhere the source of monopoly
power was on display recently
in the June 24, 2012 issue of the Palm Beach
Post in an article entitled "21 Arrested in 3 Delray Gambling Raids." Like most other
states, the state of Florida "legislated"
itself a legal monopoly in gambling and advertises relentlessly to
persuade mostly lower-income
Floridians to spend more than $4 billion/year on lottery tickets. These billions
are used to pay the
salaries and perks of myriad
government bureaucrats, including not only $25 million/year for lottery employees, but subsidies for government
school bureaucrats, TV-watching/weight-lifting fire station loafers (our "first responders"),
police, and many others.
The state of Florida, like other states, is not hesitant to use deadly force to protect its gambling monopoly. As such, it is no different
from any other criminal gang that protects its monopoly profits from illicit drugs, prostitution, kidnapping, extortion,
etc. According to the article in the Palm Beach
Post, the state’s lottery
police got wind of a private lottery game called "bolita" taking place in
the back room of a hair salon. The game involved about a dozen people and a bag with 100 numbered marbles. The people in the room were
putting money in on gambles as to what numbers would be pulled
out of the bag, just as the state lottery does several times a week but on a massively larger scale.
"Something
sinister was going on" there, the Delray Beach, Florida police were
quoted as saying. Consequently, "SWAT teams from
the Delray Beach and Boca
Raton police departments arrested
21 people." The newspaper article included pictures of "a
couple of dozen officers"
who arrived in a faux
tank dressed in camouflage, wearing
bullet-proof vests, and carrying automatic rifles. Twelve people were arrested while all of the hair salon’s patrons were "detained" (a.k.a. kidnapped) for hours while undergoing
"questioning" by police. The cops must
have realized how ridiculous
they looked (jungle
camouflage in a suburban hair
salon?!) since they immediately came up with the rationale for the raid that
"Bolita can lead to bigger crimes . . ." Today’s
bolita player may well become
the next serial killer in the eyes
of the Florida lottery police.
An especially
entertaining (and educational)
aspect of the Palm Beach Post article is the
fact that the newspaper placed directly below the article
about the hair salon raid the latest
winning Florida lottery numbers for the previous evening, including "Fantasy 5," "Play 4," "Cash 3,"
and "Mega Money" picks.
Originally
published on http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo231.html
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