Eva,

Now here I want to emphasize that bankers were in on The Fed from the start.

Some were. Others found that they were now at a disadvantage competing with those who were on the inside. But even if every single bank owner at that time was party to this, it was still a violation of the liberty to open and run a bank anyway that one wants (short of using force, fraud or theft of course).  If I wanted to offer some sort of service involving keeping peoples money, making loans, etc., and you wanted to use some of those services, and there was no force, fraud or theft going on, then where is the moral justification for government interference?  By what moral right do they say we couldn't do this?

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The notion that capitalists always compete is totally false.

That sentence is a little misleading. Some people will engage in Capitalism (free exchanges that don't involve government coercion) and others will crony up with government taking tax dollars or using regulations to hamper their competition. In the first case it is Capitalism. In the second case it isn't.

Wouldn't want to indict the Capitalist system because there are people who choose to violate its principles.

Eva,

I believe my two points still stand.  

In terms of how the word Capitalist should be used.... Those bankers who met on Jekyl Island ceased being capitalists when the system they engaged in was no longer a capitalist system.  If all the major shoe manufacturers conspired to make a deal with the administration to have the government underwrite their operations and to hamper any outside competition, those shoe manufactures would not be representing capitalism.  They would not be acting as capitalists in the meeting or in the resulting government managed consortium of shoe manufacturers.  And the resulting system would not be a free enterprise (capitalist) system in that economic sector.  

It's like where you say, "Capitalists agreeing not to compete...."  Well, there are people that do that.  And some of them may have been capitalist before they make that agreement.  And an economist might still call them a "capitalist" in the sense that they deploy private capital in the marketplace for profit making purposes.  But if their agreement to not compete involves getting laws passed to enforce no competition, then it isn't a capitalist system in that area and they are no longer capitalists to that extent.  The political definition of capitalism has to mean that government isn't controlling distribution or manufacture of what could be done without government.

My second point was the significant one.  The government has no moral right to interfere in the voluntary commercial interactions of private citizens (where there is no initiation of force, fraud or theft). When government does interfere, it is a loss of liberty - a move away from freedom towards statism. 

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In regards to the Sherman act, I'll just quote Rand:

The alleged purpose of the Antitrust laws was to protect competition; that purpose was based on the socialistic fallacy that a free, unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. But, in fact, no coercive monopoly has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of competitors into a given field, by legislative action. (For a full demonstration of this fact, I refer you to the works of the best economists.) The Antitrust laws were the classic example of a moral inversion prevalent in the history of capitalism: an example of the victims, the businessmen, taking the blame for the evils caused by the government, and the government using its own guilt as a justification for acquiring wider powers, on the pretext of “correcting” the evils.

“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.

There is extensive Objectivist literature on the anti-trust laws, and I believe the Austrian School agrees that anti-trust laws do nothing to improve on what a free market would have done, and usually make things worse.

Steve,

Okay, let's agree that capitalists (defined as owners of economic property) who collude rather than compete are not 'Capitalists'.

And since our definitions are better off when they match human behavior rather than an objective state of affairs, it's the ownership definition that needs to be changed. In this regard, Marx has a good idea: call them 'the bourgeoisie'.

In any case, Nash theorem, coupled with Kahneman and Tversky, absolutely crushed 'rational expectations', which depends upon an open, non-collusive market. So Rand, in this sense, does indeed have the last word: capitalism is an unknown ideal.

In other words, I do love her ideas; the other side of me (dad's) wants to know how things work...

Re your second point, I see a paradox which implies a moral choice. Governments force individuals to compete in the market.

To this end, yes, it's true that the framers of Sherman did see growth as an inhibition to markets. And it's not just an 'opinion' that differs from Rand, yet taken from the same data pile. Rather, they observed  two clear, salient facts that define monopoly: price raising after one gains control over a market by restriction of supply, and a simple head-count of available competitors.

So whether or not you say that the creation of monopolies is sui generis morally justifiable is one thing, yet quite another to look at them in terms of practical economics.

Eva

Steve,

We're both for free markets.

Our point of (completely respectful) disagreement is this: you seem to believe that markets & free enterprise is somehow a natural state of affairs that's distorted and abolished by the intervention of humans with bad and misguided intentions.

This seems to be the classical Randian perspective; thanks for not going fissile at my disagreement.

Again, keeping in mind our fundamental agreement that free markets are benefical, my view is that markets are ad hoc rig-ups that are chartered, organized, legislated and supervised by people of good intent.

This is a historical statemnet, upon which i'll be happy to elaborate....

Without oversight, markets collapse into monoply. So in that sense, you're correct: free enterprise and monopolies cannot co-exist.

To this end, 'liberty' is supervised, as well, much as one is free to drive, but not without a license and obedience of the speed limit (excepting Ga400, of course!)

The moral choice that we, indeed, make is to devise human institutions that encourage the positive outcomes that free enterprise offers. Therefore, to speak of free enterprise as intrinsically moral is somewhat redundant, somewhat missing the point that the moral choice was in its creating.

We, not our creation, are the moral instrument--ostensibly a distinction that defines Libs versus Objectivists.

Eva

Eva,

Markets are just where commerce happens and tend to be described, for the purpose of our discussion, in terms of what laws are in place, and whether or not they are subject to the use of force, fraud or theft as opposed to be free of those elements.

So a free market is one where voluntary interactions rule the day. Where people are free to follow their choices and are not being subjected to threats of force, force, theft, or fraud. A market is free if it is structured such that the laws only prohibit the threat of force, force, theft or fraud.

From that you can see that I do NOT believe that markets or free enterprise are a natural state of affairs. Freedom requires a very complex and difficult to maintain structure so that humans may interact in whatever way they want but without violating each other's rights.

There is a balance point between not enough structure and too much structure which defines the appropriate structure to provide a state of liberty for a given society.

Human "intervention" is required to eliminate whatever the 'natural state of affairs' might result in (anarchy, warring tribes, totalitarian regimes, National Socialist con game governments, Welfare states, etc.) These are natural in the sense that weed growing in a garden are a natural result of failed intervention by the gardener. We have to intervene in any and all bad or misguided attempts to violate rights if we are to protect rights.

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...my view is that markets are ad hoc rig-ups that are chartered, organized, legislated and supervised by people of good intent.

Market is a word with a broad set of proper meanings. There is a stamp collectors market. Inside that, a collection of individuals might work to create a temporary market for a given product. But what we are discussing is related to the government's laws that effect the economic activities of those who are subject to the laws. I would disagree with the requirement that those actively involved are people of good intent. Markets can be effected by people of bad intent. But I'd also say that we are dealing with what exists based upon the legislation without regard to what the various participants intentions were.

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Without oversight, markets collapse into monoply.

This is where we totally disagree.  A market with no oversight (ie., no anti-trust kind of regulation) - a free market - would kill each and every harmful monopoly soon after its creation.

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The moral choice that we, indeed, make is to devise human institutions that encourage the positive outcomes that free enterprise offers.

That is a statement that, from my prospective, applies to the creation of a government limited to protecting individual rights, which means limited only to the elimination of the initiation of force, threat to use force, fraud and theft. And that is because when they are removed from the environment, then what is left is a universal, maximized freedom to choose for all individuals.

And it could not mean that restricting the behaviors of some (that did not involve force, fraud or theft) because of some theory that it would benefit others.

Our primary moral choice is to pursue our individual happiness. In a society, we recognize that individual rights protect our ability to pursue our happiness and are the one thing no one else has the right to violate.