I believe that preservation of competition and the continued free-will of the consumer are paramount to the success of the free-market. What don't you understand about that? Manipulation of the free-market is the merging of companies in such a way as to monopolize the market price, therefore denying the consumer any choice, which, in turn, degrades the very competition that is supposed to drive the market. That is a much more dangerous manipulation of the market, if you ask me. Coercive power would mean that the government forces new companies to exist and rival the industry leader. That is clearly not my proposal.
because you take away the free will of the consumer when you use his tax dollars to prevent him from voluntarily making purchases. you explicitly oppose the free will of the consumer. where is my freedom as a consumer to purchase new energy sources if you are holding them back by artificially keeping oil prices low? what about my freedom as a an investor or inventor of new products to have my products compete with oil? how is it fair if the government is holding oil prices low and keeping me out of the market? you are directly crushing alternatives and lengthening the time we are dependent on oil. and that has huge geopolitical implications, according to you, right? what if i dont want to pay taxes to cripple oil companies. what if i want to pay what they are asking? what if i want to invest in oil and make profits? and you obviolusly oppose the free will of the company to earn the profits on the products THEY OWN. remember, you do not own their products. these are private businesses, we are not communists. anything the government does is by force. the government removes free will from the equation. in a free market you dont have to buy anything. but when the government does something, it takes our freedom out of it, and also forcibly takes our tax money to implement whatever they are doing. freedom of choice should always be the force that decides what succeeds and fails in the market. thats the way markets work. not the government protecting you from prices. you should decide yourself what prices are too high. you dont need the government to tell you that, do you? an oil company can choose to price itself out of the market, and i can choose to buy alternatives or invest in them. nobody is holding a gun to my head in the free market, ever. but the government does forcibly take your money and use it to prevent us from exchanging goods and servies that it deems inappropriate. this should never happen. it should be our right to pay whatever we want for whatever product we want. if oil companies charge 6 dollars a gallon, the government should never use their power to forcibly change that. there are people who believe that the profit motive is too dangerous and people need protection from corporations. they do not, as long as they are granted to freedom to choose for themselves what to purchase. people like you make a similar argument about rent controls. it results in disaster. anytime people want to restrict someone from making profits and not allowing natural flow of money through the economy, it ruins things. if it didnt, communism would work. dont be scared to let people profit off the things they own. thats why they are producing the goods in the first place. dont buy them if you dont like their prices. and dont pretend that is not a choice. dont forget that only the government has guns and jails. corporations dont, you dont have to purchase anything if you dont want.
They could do all of this before without you knowing. What is the point of a wire tap if you know about it?
right, is that really something new? isnt this how they have been catching mobsters and such forever?
No point at all during an investigation. But the Patriot Act can prevent you from finding out that it ever happened. And it prevents a judge from protecting you against over-zealous investigators. Before they had to prove to a judge that there was probable cause that a crime had been committed. A proper trail of records had to be kept of taps, break-ins, and other invasions of privacy, so that they could be suppoeaned by citizens if necessary to protect his constitutional rights. Under the Patriot Act, law enforcement officers can compromise your rights and security without reasonable suspicion, without probable cause, without a warrant, and they don't have to keep records of this activity. This makes it difficult for a citizen to sue for wrongful prosecution or harrassment by law officers or other government agents. Without these checks and balances, law officers can and do go beyond their authority. This doesn't apply for for illegal aliens, but a US citizen has certain constitutional rights that must be protected. Taking the judge and the paper trail out of the loop opens the door for abuse.
What on earth are you talking about? How is it taking away someones free will when they clearly have a choice to make regarding what products they consume? It isn't. You are having tremendous difficulty staying on track, here. No one said anything about energy sources. All I'm saying is that one single company should not be allowed to literally corner their respective industry. 'People like me', in terms of this argument, are sensible enough to acknowledge that monopolies go against the very backbone of capitalism, and include the large majority of U.S. citizens.
do they have a choice about payin the taxes that you will need to enact and enforce your policies restricting oil companies? do they have a choice when they want to pay the price the oil comapny asks? do they have a choice to invest in oil and make the profits they deserve? do they have a choice to develop an alternative to oil and have a fair chance in the marketplace? you explicitly favor opposing my free will to voluntarily enter into transactions because you feel the need to protect me from voluntarily paying prices that you think are too high. pay attention now. if you use the force of the government to keep oil prices at whatever you deem to be "fair", then that makes it tougher for alternatives to compete in the marketplace. cant you understand that higher oil prices mean investment and development of new energy sources? you are discouraging progress. high oil prices mean we move more quickly to new forms of energy. don't slow that process by having the government manipulate the market. the government protecting us from people who would like to voluntarily sell us products is not capitalism. it is the opposite. you cant be arguing for government control of the economy and calling it capitalism.
Please give some examples of any bigtime energy companies that are really doing good work and making progress developing alternative energy sources. Your implied correlation simply isn't there.
you misunderstand. perhaps i didnt make my point well. if the government takes an anti-free market position and forces oil prices to stay however low the government wants them by breaking up "monopolies" or restricting profits, consumers have no motivation to buy oil alternatives, and therefore there is no profit motive to produce alternatives. if we allow the free market to operate, then if oil prices are allowed to rise because of whatever reason, be it greedy oil companies or just scarcity, then that will open the door for alternatives. as of now oil is relatively cheap so alternatives arent all that needed. but if the thing that people are so scared of happens, oil companies "gouge" us with much higher prices then that will exponentially increase the speed of the development, investment and implentation of alternatives. in fact the katrina spike in oil prices was a huge boon for hybrid cars and other alternatives that reduce oil use. if oil went up in price long term, solutions would come quickly. the problem is people are wimps and think they need protection from the the evil profit-making corporations and believe they have a god-given right to buy oil at a price they like, not what the oil companies want to charge. they want to break down the free market. the free market is great because it adjusts quickly. people see openings in the market, and they are there quickly. alternative fuels could be hugely profitable and would be terrific for almost everyone. but people are so scared of high oil prices that they want to ruin everything by eneacting rules that are counterproductive. they dont see how government regulation often produces the opposite result of what was intended. breaking up monopolies might actually lengthen our dependence on oil, and that is a bad thing for many reasons, economic, geopolitical, and i suppose environmental.
Examples? What new energy sources? And is it the oil companies doing the investing? The oil companies blame the recent price increase and resulting widfall profits on insufficient refining capacity. They certainly aren't investing that profit in more refineries. There hasn't been a new refinery built in this country in 29 years . . . and no new ones are being planned.
