I wonder if even rightwingers still claim that, regarding multinationals and other giant companies.
Yes. Unfortunately, they do.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a shower.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
It remains that even from a rightwing point of view, monopolies and multinationals are an obvious obstacle to healthy competition. I mean, either you're a freemarketeer, or you're not.
I would think so too. But apparently I'm wrong, at least according to several people I know whose credentials as "right-wingers" I have no reason to doubt (their sanity, yes, but not their political leanings).
There exists an unfortunately influential ideology in some right-wing circles that says that regulation of transnational companies is a greater imposition on personal liberty than permitting these transnational companies to run wild. The same doctrine also states that the "free" in "free market" means "free from government intervention," but does not say anything about freedom from exercise of monopoly power (the Austrian school of thought [I use the term loosely] even deny that monopolies can exercise power).
I wonder if the circles circulating this doctrine would exist elsewhere than the United States. Due to many factors, the idea that the state is "bad" in principle is unfortunately almost cosubstantial with the US. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
