Statism, AC, and Corporatism- The End Result is the Same

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BTW, back to your point that in a free market, power will concentrate and be used to erect barriers to entry, in your example of your awesome airline business model, which market participants are flexing their concentrated power to keep you out of the market?

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Let's make the assumption that my business model is, in fact, superior. Let's further assume that I could get enough debt and equity financing for 10 jetliners and that 10 jetliners would be of "sufficient mass" for me to start a viable airline (this would be about the bare minimum for the floatation of my business model).

Now, if you grant me these assumptions, do you not believe that the large carriers would engage in predatory pricing on the routes that I run in order to eliminate the threat I pose with a superior idea?

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Liquidity in the Capital markets prevents predatory pricing. If your airline is truly more efficient than the existing ones, then it would be a tremendous investment opportunity. If the legacy airlines start predatory pricing, you can also drop your price and use the investment money to beat them. The potential reward for the investors is huge. When the legacy company goes bankrupt (or is crippled), your company will enjoy a very large market share.

The only thing that prevents this from happening is government rescue packages for inefficient airlines and the additional potential for anti-trust lawsuits against your new company when you establish strong market share. Ironic eh?

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I don't disagree with the government being a huge issue here. FWIW, I view our current government as corporatist (something that I don't think the masses of the populace believe just yet). I am for much, much less government than we currently have. I think the libertarian corner of the graph is the right place to be and I think that we would get along just fine politically in today's political spectrum. I do, however, fine myself being more moderate in my views. We share the same direction, but not the same distance.

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I am probably in a very similar situation to you but I'm aaalmost ready to accept AC. Of the concerns you have, I think several are not warranted, monopoly / anti-trust in particular. One concern that a lot of people have is that we'll wind up with a ton of evil monopolies who'll reduce everyone's standard of living. The fact is though, that natural (ie no gov interference) monopolies just don't happen for all the reasons we've already gone over. All monopolies that have ever existed have been for one of the following reasons:

1. Government legislation restricting entry into the market (eg Post Office)
2. Corporate Taxation. This causes the smaller firms to not have as much capital as they otherwise would, making it more difficult for them to compete with the big leviathan companies.
3. Government subsidies for politically connected companies.
4. Bankruptcy rescue packages for politically connected companies.

It's also amusing (or upsetting) to note that the Sherman act was originally introduced to *maintain* local monopolies in the meat packing industry and keep prices high.

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I would concede that the AC model is a "better" model than the other two. It is better, but this debate is a necessity even amongst the libertarian quandrant because of its ramifications. As far as your post, I would like to speak about natural monopolies not happening. How did government keep Microsoft competitors from rising up?

On another note, it is unique that all of the arguments have come from the AC side and that I have had zero replies from statists or corporatists. The traditional right-left spectrum of American politics has been completely silent in this thread. Considering its length, I find that silence to be extremely telling. Did all the hard-core Democrats and Republicans leave the board?