People Are ‘Dying In Hospital Corridors’ Under Britain’s Socialized Healthcare System

There’s new outrage overseas, as people are literally dying in the corridors of hospitals because of Britain’s overrun socialized medicine scam. In case Venezuela didn’t do enough to prove that socialism is a deadly joke on humanity, Britain’s healthcare system should be the last nail in its coffin.

The patients are dying in hospital corridors as safety is jeopardized by intolerable conditions say doctors in Britain, according to the BBC last week.  More details continue to emerge surrounding the newest outrages which have sprung up from Britain’s crisis-beset healthcare system. This most recent revelation came as a result of an open letter sent to the Prime Minister by 68 senior doctors, offering details of the inhuman conditions which have become common in the socialized National Health Service’s hospitals.

The letter, which collected statistics from NHS hospitals in England and Wales, found that in December alone over 300,000 patients were made to wait in emergency rooms for more than four hours before being seen. Thousands more suffered long waits in ambulances before even being allowed into the emergency room. But the revelation of horrors was just beginning. The letter further noted that it had become “routine” for patients to be left on gurneys in corridors for as long as 12 hours before being offered proper beds, with many of them eventually being put into makeshift wards hastily constructed in side-rooms. In addition, it was revealed that around 120 patients per day are being attended to in corridors and waiting rooms, with many being made to undergo humiliating treatments in the public areas of hospitals, and some even dying prematurely as a result. One patient reported having gone to the emergency room with a gynecological problem which had left her in severe pain and bleeding, a lack of treatment rooms led hospital staff to examine her in a busy corridor, in full view of other patients. “There was no dignity. It was degrading,” she said. “I couldn’t fault the staff, there was nothing they could do. It was chaos.”

As the NHS entered the first week of 2018, over 97% of its trusts in England were reporting levels of overcrowding so severe as to be “unsafe.” For those who champion socialism, it’s tempting to believe that these extreme cases must be a rare occurrence, but the statistical facts prove otherwise. Horror stories have become increasingly the norm for any socialized healthcare system, just as under socialism in general, poverty becomes the norm.

it doesn’t look like this socialized system will ever work as the horrifying reality gets worse. Many insist that by pumping more taxpayer money into it, the state-run healthcare system somehow magically become a utopia.  Almost as predictable as the regular emergence of new stories of this kind is the equally unwavering refusal of British commentators to consider that the state-run monopoly structure of the system itself might be to blame. Many, including the Prime Minister herself, have pointed to the spike in seasonal illnesses such as the flu at this time of year, to distract from the more fundamental flaws of the system. Officials from Public Health England went so far as to openly dismiss this as a major cause of the current healthcare crisis, stating that current levels of hospital admissions due to the flu are “certainly not unprecedented.” The aging population and local councils’ failure to provide more non-hospital care have also been blamed.

By far the most commonly suggested remedy is simply to inject more taxpayers’ money into this failing system. Indeed, the belief that Britain’s perpetual healthcare crisis is solely the result of funding cuts by miserly Conservative politicians is so widespread that it is almost never challenged, least of all by the trusted experts within the system itself, many of whom stand to benefit from increased funding.

The popular caricature of the NHS as suffering from chronic underfunding is simply a myth. In fact, even when adjusting for inflation, it is clear that government funding to the NHS has been increasing at an extraordinary rate since the turn of the millennium, much more quickly than during the early years which its supporters look back on so fondly.

One commonly heard soundbite from supporters of the current system is that the Conservatives have allowed healthcare spending to slump to historically low levels; all it would take to return the NHS to the levels of success it supposedly previously enjoyed would be to increase its funding back to the same level it previously enjoyed, or so they say. However, to believe such a statement one would have to make two separate misinterpretations of the statistics, both so basic that they would strike shame into even the dullest high school math student: firstly, it is not the absolute amount of spending on the NHS which has fallen under the Conservative-led governments of 2010-18, but merely the rate at which spending is continuing to increase, even when adjusting for inflation. Secondly, the only reason that the rate of increase seems to have fallen is because of how disproportionately high it had been been under the infamously spendthrift Labour governments of 1997-2010. –Mises

What would it take to revive the dead socialized healthcare scheme? Simple.  Free markets. More competition and freedom of choice would not only lower costs but give those in need a say in their own health. As long as British healthcare is organized as a taxpayer-funded state monopoly it will continue to fail, regardless of the amount of money thrown at the problem.

How Much Space Does $1,500 Rent In The World's 'Most Magnetic' Cities?

New Yorkers who wince every time they slip a $1,500 rent check under their super’s door should consider moving to Shanghai, or maybe Berlin.

According to a new study published on RentCafe, $1,500 will buy you three times more space in Shanghai than in Los Angeles and twice as much in Frankfurt. Meanwhile, rents per square foot are five times higher in San Francisco than they are in Berlin.

Rentcafe used data from the Global Power Index and data on price-to-square footage ratios that it had collected for a previous study to compare how much space $1,500 will buy in the world’s 30 “most magnetic” cities - i.e. cities that are popular tourism hubs.

The study’s authors presented their results in an interactive graphic that allows users to compare costs between cities. Some of the most expensive markets include San Francisco, Manhattan and Zurich. Among the least expensive are Istanbul, Shanghai and Berlin.

Manhattan, for example, offers only 277 square foot (26 m2) for $1,500.  In Seoul, the same amount of money will rent you no less than a 1,389 square foot (129 m2) apartment, ample space for one person.

In San Francisco, $1,500 a month will rent you a 316 square foot apartment. Meanwhile, in Austria, $1,500 will rent you 1,009 square feet – almost three times as much. Rentcafe adds that, while SF has some of the most widely regarded cultural amenities in the world, Vienna - the City of Music – has plenty of entertainment options, from museums, vintage cinemas, live shows to recreational parks and hiking trails.

That is to say that one doesn"t necessarily need to pay sky-high rents to live in a fun urban environment.
 

There's Literally A 'Token' Called "Fuck" That's Up 370% In The Last 24 Hours

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

I vividly remember having a conversation several years ago with a woman about her real estate investments in the United States.

It must have been around 2005 or 2006… the peak of the property bubble.

She was a psychologist from somewhere in the midwest, telling me about how she was flipping off-plan condominiums in Florida.

Basically she would put money down to secure a condo unit in a building before it broke ground, then sell her contract to someone else at a higher price when the building was closer to completion.

I remember as she told me this story she was practically cackling at how quickly and easily she was doubling and tripling her money, and at one point said, “It is just soooo easy for me.”

Those words stuck.

I remember thinking, “Investing isn’t supposed to be easy. There’s supposed to be risk and hard work involved.”

But she wasn’t alone. Legions of amateur investors were piling into the market doing exactly the same thing.

Everyone seemed to be flipping condos. And everyone seemed to be making money.

It didn’t add up.

I remember one investor explaining to me how he would flip his condo contract to someone else when the building was 30% complete. Then that buyer would flip the contract to another investor when the building was 60% complete. Then another sale when the building was 80% complete, etc.

“But who is the person at the end of the line?” I asked. “Someone has to eventually live in all of these condos and be willing to pay the highest price.”

“Oh there will ALWAYS be plenty of people who will live here,” he told me.

To these investors it was a foregone conclusion that required zero analysis: there will always be buyers, no matter how high the price gets.

One of the marks of a good investor is learning from his/her mistakes; when an investment performs poorly, a good investor will try to figure out WHY, and incorporate those lessons into future decisions.

But a GREAT investor will learn from his/her successes.

This is rare. Perhaps it’s part of our human nature. When we succeed, we automatically conclude that we’re really smart.

We seldom examine what really happened. Did we get lucky? Were we riding the wave of a giant bubble? Or, perhaps our analysis was spot-on and we nailed it.

It’s hard to say for sure without some serious self-reflection.

But again, it’s in our nature to presume that we’re brilliant.

And that may be one of the most dangerous things of all… because our infatuation with our own brilliance causes us to do irrational things.

Instead of thinking, “Whew, I got really lucky, I’d better take some money off the table before this market crashes,” we think, “I’m so smart… now I’m going to double down and make even more money.”

It’s like gamblers at the craps table– people delude themselves into believing that they’re on a ‘hot streak’ and ‘can’t lose’, so they keep increasing their bets instead of cashing in their chips.

Eventually the luck runs out… and the money vanishes quickly.

I’m telling you all of this because I see the same thing right now in the “ICO” market.

If you haven’t heard of ICOs, it stands for Initial Coin Offering. It’s a combination of venture capital and cryptofinance.

Traditionally, startup companies have raised the money they’ve needed from angel investors and VC funds.

These days, companies are raising money by selling digital ‘tokens’ to investors, most of whom typically pay in Bitcoin, Ether, or some other cryptocurrency.

Tokens often represent shares in the startup company, just in the same way that Apple stock represents shares in Apple.

And, just like shares of Apple, investors can buy and sell their tokens in the market.

There are countless startup companies now issuing tokens. And, just like the price of the cryptocurrencies themselves, many ICOs have soared in price.

There’s a token issued by Stratis, for example, that is up 101,168% since its ICO last summer. The NXT token is up 672,989%.

Those are not type-o’s.

There’s another token that’s actually called “Fuck” which is up 370% in the last 24 hours.

The returns are absurd… especially considering the assets are priced in Ether or Bitcoin, which have also soared to all-time highs.

So on top of a 1,000% return in Bitcoin, ICO investors have also made a 100,000% return in the token.

But I’m hearing exactly the same cackling that I heard from the real estate bubble days more than a decade ago.

– It’s soooo easy to make money in ICOs.
– It’s a foregone conclusion that the tokens will go up in value.

Sorry, but it just doesn’t compute.

If the tokens represent ownership in a business, then the only thing that matters is whether or not the underlying business performs well.

Does the company have a compelling long-term strategic plan?

More importantly– are the managers successfully implementing the plan and achieving milestones?

Is the company on a path to financial sustainability?

Nobody seems to be paying attention to these details. They just buy tokens with the expectation that the price will rise.

And even if a business performs well, it’s ridiculous to think hat a startup company can be worth 100,000% more in a year. Or nearly 700,000% more in a couple of years.

To put these numbers in context, Peter Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook back in 2004 as the company’s first big investor. In 2012 he sold most of it for $1 billion.

That’s a return of 200,000% in eight years… pretty tame by ICO standards.

Investing isn’t supposed to be easy, especially when speculating in startup companies. There’s supposed to be risk. Serious analysis. And lots of losers.

It’s not to say that there aren’t any good businesses issuing tokens. But it’s pretty clear this trend is a massive bubble.

Mainstream Media Just Admitted Biotech Company Has Exclusive Patents on GMO Cannabis

In 2015, the fake news website, World News Daily Report created a massive internet hoax that still gets spread around today. The hoax claimed that Monsanto was creating a genetically modified cannabis to supply to the cannabis industry. Although it’s not entirely unbelievable, this was proven completely false. However, fast-forward to 2017 and GMO cannabis is now a reality which is getting coverage in the mainstream media.

In an article from Reuters this week, on biotechnology being used to lower nicotine in tobacco, the biotech company, 22nd Century Group was highlighted for their work in trying to make cigarettes less addictive by genetically engineering tobacco to have less of the drug.

However, also in the article was the admission that the company has more than 200 patents that give it the ability to increase or decrease the level of nicotine in tobacco plants, as well as the level of cannabinoids in cannabis plants.

What was once fake news, is now a reality.

According to 22nd Century Group, they were granted an exclusive sublicense in the United States and a co-exclusive sublicense in the remainder of the world, excluding Canada, to patents and patent applications relating to the cannabis plant that are required for the production of cannabinoids, the major active ingredients in the cannabis plant.

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The company claims that their intention is to foster the growth of the hemp industry in the United States by creating a cannabis that has zero THC, thus making it legal under the government’s tyrannical standards.

However, without this GMO cannabis, headway is already being made in states across the country in regards to hemp through states refusing to listen to the feds. As TFTP reported in June, Nevada became the latest state to defy the federal government’s apparent “War on Nature” by legalizing commercial industrial hemp production.

READ MORE:  Exclusive: Shona Banda Speaks Out on How the State Brainwashed Her Son After Kidnapping Him

Industrial hemp already contains little to no THC, so the need to genetically modify it to make it ‘legal’ in the eyes of the state is as absurd as it is unnecessary. However, given the shift toward a more sustainable society, it is highly likely that hemp production will skyrocket over the next decade.

Those who own patents on the hemp which will be allowed by the federal government first will essentially create a monopoly on their product using the state to block other, natural, growers.

In essence, through the use of government granted monopolies, 22nd Century Group and others like them could become to hemp what Monsanto has become to corn and soy.

While this is speculation at this point, it is important to raise awareness now before the only hemp allowed to be grown in the United States requires massive amounts of chemical inputs like most agriculture on the planet today.

“The cannabis industry should be aware that sooner rather than later, there will be big ag at play in this industry,” Dr. Reggie Gaudino of the Berkeley-based Steep Hill cannabis laboratory said, according to the Eureka Standard-Times. “And big ag uses exactly these techniques. We’re working to help the current population of farmers and breeders retain relevance when big ag comes knocking on the door.”

The good news is that if 22nd Century Group or other biotech firms like them ever attempt to market a high THC version of their GMO cannabis for medicinal or personal consumption, survey says—people won’t buy it.

READ MORE:  Sheriff Says Cannabis Makes People Murderers Because "Rational Thought" Leads to Violence

“I don’t think there is anything that GMOs could do for cannabis that we need that couldn’t be done by advanced plant breeding techniques,”  Phylos Bioscience’s CEO Mowgli Holmes in Oregon said to High Times in May. “GMOs can make cannabis that glows in the dark, but we don’t need that.”

As Maureen Meehan writes, while we all would like to know more about cannabis science—especially as CBD and medical marijuana become increasingly important—most of us want our weed to be grown as naturally as possible and preferably outdoors.

For now, however, Dr. Gaudino has a strategy to ensure a sufficient fight against big ag’s GMO inevitable attempt to take over the cannabis industry — breed your butts off and make every strain you can to have them all open source.

“At some point, big agriculture, Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, the pharmaceutical industry, they’re all going to jump on the bandwagon once everything goes from schedule I to schedule II… A savvy observer of the industry will see that the movement is gaining momentum and is moving towards that direction. Why is that important?”

“That’s important because every strain that is publicly available for sale right now basically becomes open source. Patent law states that you can’t apply for a patent of any kind on anything that’s been being sold for a year or more. The message that Steep Hill is trying to get out is, if you’re a breeder, the best thing that you can be doing right now is breeding your butt off.”

“Finding those nuances, going after those new unique strains, trying to develop better phenotypes so that you can have some relevance a few years down the line. There’s not a single grower who seriously has the power to compete with the likes of the Monsanto or Dow AgroSciences.”

“The only thing left then is to put your stake in the ground and to really protect your strains so that when everything that’s on the shelves now becomes open source, you have something better to offer the community. That’s exactly the message we’re trying to do.”

Amazon is a destroyer of jobs and the merchant economy

If this is progress, just how much more can our economy afford? The myth of cheap prices, conveniently seldom factors in the structural costs to society. Building an all inclusive monopoly based upon minimal employees and predatory prices ignores the long anti-trust history that helped create the middle class. The last fifty years has demonstrated the systemic retreat from family prosperity, which has produced a vast disproportionate of wealth among the fewer haves and the growing have-nots. The enormous accumulation of market share that Amazon has steamrolled under the hypnosis of ease in selection of products, placing orders, timely deliveries, and most of all; cheapest pricing has caused the demise of much of traditional retail commerce.

This is not a replacement of horse buggies with a model T car. Henry Ford introduced a dramatic increase in pay for his workers, so they could earn their way to prosperity. No, Amazon is applying the Chinese model of coolie labor practices to stamp out the competition with advanced technology that is based upon eliminating jobs from the work force.

Even that ultimate monopolist John D. Rockefeller, fueled the industrial revolution with Standard Oil. The economy flourished, run on cheap energy. However, with Amazon, the consolidation of online purchases is mostly a discretionary choice. Sadly, by selecting to buy from Amazon, the consumer is putting a dagger in the backs of the main street economy.

Yes, this is the same result that for decades has seen Wal-Mart close down the mom and pop retailer. Now Amazon is bent on fracturing the sales from your friendly greeter in the blue vest. Some may say, it is about time that the Benton Supercenter gets it come-uppins, but the big difference is that all those retail jobs will become just one more statistic in the unemployed reports.

Now some will say that the Seattle behemoth is becoming a major employer. Amazon soars to more than 341K employees — adding more than 110K people in a single year. Wal-Mart employs 2.3 million associates around the world, of which 1.5 million in the U.S. alone. Market Watch reported on some most disturbing news, Amazon is going to kill more American jobs than China did.

“But for retail workers, Amazon is a grave threat. Just ask the 10,100 workers who are losing their jobs at Macy’s. Or the 4,000 at The Limited. Or the thousands of workers at Sears and Kmart, which just announced 150 stores will be closing. Or the 125,000 retail workers who’ve been laid off over the past two years.”

A sample of some of the List of Amazon.com products and services does not fully account for the cloud-based products including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security and enterprise applications. Jeff Bezos is hardly a job creator when he can find a technocratic method to data mine the remains of the shrinking and often part time work force. His fascination with a Blue Origin Rocket Space Program, while his personal political propaganda and Fake News, Washington Compost publication seeks to explore the final frontier for the uber rich and keepers of the Transhumanist elites.

Why would you become a Prime subscriber using the Echo surveillance system? Millennials may be oblivious to destructive economic consequences from a culture, who values personal immediacy satisfaction over a rational profit floor on business transactions. If the retail game is to see just how low one can sell, only a guarantee price war will result.

The fallout from the deliberate assault of Amazon on the American supply chain is undeniable. Amazon and Walmart are in an all-out price war that is terrifying America’s biggest brands foretells an ominous and intentional destruction of a valid profit centered consumer based retail commerce.

“In some instances, Amazon is willing to lose money for some period of time on a product it feels it has to have. Jeff Bezos’s company knows, after all, that it has to continue to increase its selection in non-perishable grocery goods if it is going to really challenge Walmart in the $800 billion category.

But, more so than in the past, Amazon is ratcheting up the pressure on manufacturers of goods that the online retailer is unable to sell for a profit, executives say. Separate from the algorithm, brands are also facing the realization that their products that are sold profitably in stores may become unprofitable online when shipping costs are factored in.”

When such a street fight drains the life blood from the chain of supply relationships, the risk is that the merchants and providers will not be able to cut their margins and remain in business. Allowing an egomaniac like Bezos to, in effect blackmail, the product mass-producers; highlights the absurd reliance on destroying thousands of companies for the fleeting gratification of pumping the Amazon stock price.

The merchant economy is grounded on hundreds of thousands of product/supplier/retail outlet relationships and billions of consumer selection choices. At each level, a viable margin markup is needed to afford a final profit to remain in operation. Just how long will all those dedicated Amazon consumers be happy when the Bezos crew of greedy buyers are no long able to deliver their favorite items, because the makers or producers have stopped supplying?

There is an old saying in the consumer mass marketing, “selling at a loss is made up by volume”. Amazon is a pillaging predator and should be prosecuted under anti-trust laws. If Standard Oil could be broken up (for the good of the country) Amazon needs to be broken up into hundreds of independent ventures that will dissipate the corporatist power to fix prices and eliminate competition.

Consumers need to buy local and protect the jobs of their regional economies. Globalists like Bezos are not innovators as he wants others to believe. He is a robber baron using cyber algorithms and below-cost pricing to control and corner markets that will only result in ruining the economy.

Via Batr

Featured Image: Chris Beikmann/Flickr

Arizona Challenges the Fed’s Money Monopoly

(RPI) History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver.

Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.

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Despite the hostility toward gold from modern politicians, gold played a role in US monetary policy for sixty years after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Then, in 1971, as concerns over the US government’s increasing deficits led many foreign governments to convert their holdings of US dollars to gold, President Nixon closed the gold window, creating America’s first purely fiat currency.

America’s 46-year experiment in fiat currency has gone exactly as followers of the Austrian school predicted: a continuing decline in the dollar’s purchasing power accompanied by a decline in the standard of living of middle- and working-class Americans, a series of Federal Reserve-created booms followed by increasingly severe busts, and an explosive growth in government spending. Federal Reserve policies are also behind much of the increase in income inequality.

Since the 2008 Fed-created economic meltdown, more Americans have become aware of the Federal Reserve’s responsibility for America’s economic problems. This growing anti-Fed sentiment is one of the key factors behind the liberty movement’s growth and represents the most serious challenge to the Fed’s legitimacy in its history. This movement has made “Audit the Fed” into a major national issue that is now closer than ever to being signed into law.

Audit the Fed is not the only focus of the growing anti-Fed movement. For example, this Wednesday the Arizona Senate Finance and Rules Committees will consider legislation (HB 2014) officially defining gold, silver, and other precious metals as legal tender. The bill also exempts transactions in precious metals from state capital gains taxes, thus ensuring that people are not punished by the taxman for rejecting Federal Reserve notes in favor of gold or silver. Since inflation increases the value of precious metals, these taxes give the government one more way to profit from the Federal Reserve’s currency debasement.

HB 2014 is a very important and timely piece of legislation. The Federal Reserve’s failure to reignite the economy with record-low interest rates since the last crash is a sign that we may soon see the dollar’s collapse. It is therefore imperative that the law protect people’s right to use alternatives to what may soon be virtually worthless Federal Reserve notes.

Passage of HB 2014 would also send a message to Congress and the Trump administration that the anti-Fed movement is growing in influence. Thus, passage of this bill will not just strengthen movements in other states to pass similar legislation; it will also help build support for the Audit the Fed bill and legislation repealing federal legal tender laws.

This Wednesday I will be in Arizona to help rally support for HB 2014, speaking on behalf of the bill before the Arizona Senate Finance Committee at 9:00 a.m. I will also be speaking at a rally at noon at the Arizona state capitol. I hope every supporter of sound money in the Phoenix area joins me to show their support for ending the Fed’s money monopoly.

By Ron Paul / Republished with permission / Ron Paul Institute / Report a typo

Monopolies Are Caused by Government, Not Technology, and Should be Removed by the Courts

Via The Daily Bell

Monopolies Are Worse Than We Thought ... Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the problem of monopoly. This doesn’t mean literal monopoly, like when one utility company provides all the power in a city. It refers to market concentration in general -- when an industry goes from having 20 players to having only 10, or when the four biggest companies in an industry start taking a bigger and bigger share of sales. This sort of creeping oligopoly acts much like a literal monopoly -- it raises prices, limits market size and tends to make the economy less efficient. - Bloomberg

Market concentration hurts workers according to this article. It"s true, but makes no distinction between voluntary monopolies and imposed monopolies.

In some cases, monopolies are valuable and adopted voluntarily. For instance, light bulbs are standardized. This is a form of voluntary monopoly and customers do not react against it from what we can tell.

Then there"s the Federal Reserve, which has been given the power to regulate and print money.

The Fed is a government monopoly with all the negatives we associate with this kind of monopoly. It runs money for the sake of a handful of people and not for the larger good.

Additionally, the idea that the Fed could run money and regulate banks for the larger good is suspect anyway. It is not going to turn into an eleemosynary institution just because it has the ability to exercise a monopoly.

More:

I suspect that creeping monopoly will prove to be one of the main reasons for decreasing business dynamism. And it could even be a contributor to slow productivity growth.

In other words, many of the diseases in our economy can probably be traced, at least in part, to the problem of market concentration. In a previous post, I mentioned a couple of potential causes. The obvious culprit would be a more lax attitude toward antitrust enforcement.

If free-market fundamentalism caused the U.S. to be friendlier toward big mergers since the 1990s, this could have encouraged concentration. One problem with this story is that antitrust fines have actually been on the rise: Regulation can increase monopoly power by raising barriers to entry.

Even within a couple of grafs the author says two contradictory things. First he says the antitrust enforcement has made monopolies more common. Then he says that antitrust fines have been on the rise but that they too can encourage monopolies by creating barriers to entry.

The article says that if regulation is the main reason for monopolies than he will have to become "much more libertarian." In fact it is already established that regulation is a main cause of monopolies.

However, the article doesn"t see it this way. Modern regulatory trends, he declares, have only been around since about 2000. Therefore blaming regulation for monopolies must not be true.

Additionally, the article mentions a recent paper claiming that a few "superstar" companies in various fields have naturally emerged as quasi-monopolies. Modern technology may simply have change the way companies relate to each other and to the market. "Those companies could simply be out-competing their rivals."

Yet a third reason could be because technology has broadened competition and top brands are now far more ubiquitous. Big corporations can now more easily push out smaller ones.

Probably none of this is true. What builds big corporations with monopoly tendencies is what we have been saying all along: Monopoly force exercised through the court system, and by the legislature.

Remove intellectual property rights and corporate person-hood and you would go a long ways to naturally reducing the overly large size of corporations.

If technology is the culprit, then the problem will be complex indeed. But technology is not the culprit. America"s judicial system and legislature has created the problem and can solve it in large part by walking back a few of decisions.

Of course the chance of this are fairly minimal. The current system only makes thing more complicated over time.

Conclusion: But if the court at the federal level could be compelled to reexamine its decisions and then to change them, the US would become a much better place. Involuntary monopolies would become far fewer. And that would help everyone.