Do you realize that when there was no regulation in the late 19th century "small business" very quickly went extinct wherever this was possible? In fact not only did the small business go extinct, the big companies did too until only one or two monopolies were left. Where it didn't happened it couldn't have happened because it wasn't practical at the time, for example, small food stores and restaurants survived for a while, yet when infrastructure developed sufficiently in the 20th century, those got swallowed or driven out of business by big chains too. In fact, the media is a classic and relatively recent example - there used to be regulation preventing a few corporations from taking over the whole media market, but the Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated it and, surprise, surprise, it all ended up in the hands of several big corporations, with the following loss of jobs and decline in content quality.
This is a natural consequence of free market systems - differences in economic power between different players tend to get amplified with the end results being that only very few, in the long run just one, is left. That's also why the simplistic idea that we're just going to remove all regulation and let employers and workers negotiate between themselves can only lead to disaster - employers and workers can negotiate satisfactory conditions for the workers only if the power distribution between the two parties is equal. It never is and the result in the absence of regulation is ruthless exploitation of workers.
Also, I don't understand how people can so easily fall for the "we're going to promote small business" fallacy. There relative importance of small business and big corporations in the US economy is skewed in favor of big corporations. That's not going to get better without regulation - yes, all the regulation that protects the big corporation has to go away, that goes without saying, but no regulation at all is also disastrous.
Finally, since the subject is Ron Paul and how qualified he is for president - how do you see his positions on climate change, abortion, religion, etc. It is not all about economics after all, in fact the importance of the economy in people's thinking is vastly overinflated, while the issue of primary importance these days are things like Peak Oil and climate change, of which Ron Paul is firmly in the lunatics camp
This is a natural consequence of free market systems - differences in economic power between different players tend to get amplified with the end results being that only very few, in the long run just one, is left. That's also why the simplistic idea that we're just going to remove all regulation and let employers and workers negotiate between themselves can only lead to disaster - employers and workers can negotiate satisfactory conditions for the workers only if the power distribution between the two parties is equal. It never is and the result in the absence of regulation is ruthless exploitation of workers.
Also, I don't understand how people can so easily fall for the "we're going to promote small business" fallacy. There relative importance of small business and big corporations in the US economy is skewed in favor of big corporations. That's not going to get better without regulation - yes, all the regulation that protects the big corporation has to go away, that goes without saying, but no regulation at all is also disastrous.
Finally, since the subject is Ron Paul and how qualified he is for president - how do you see his positions on climate change, abortion, religion, etc. It is not all about economics after all, in fact the importance of the economy in people's thinking is vastly overinflated, while the issue of primary importance these days are things like Peak Oil and climate change, of which Ron Paul is firmly in the lunatics camp
