Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.philosophy.objectivism,alt.politics.economics,talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism,talk.politics.medicine,alt.politics.reform,alt.politics.radical-left,talk.politics.theory Path: news.csc.fi!news.eunet.fi!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!daedalus From: daedalus@netcom.com (Richard Farrar) Subject: Re: A Non-Libertarian FAQ Message-ID: Followup-To: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.philosophy.objectivism,alt.politics.economics,talk.politics.misc,alt.individualism,talk.politics.medicine,alt.politics.reform,alt.politics.radical-left,talk.politics.theory Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] References: <3asubi$qmu@nntp.interaccess.com> <3be0dn$3sb@nntp.interaccess.com> <3bil36$714@emoryu1.cc.emory.edu> Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 01:41:25 GMT Lines: 29 Xref: news.csc.fi alt.politics.libertarian:65909 alt.society.civil-liberty:19697 alt.philosophy.objectivism:25007 alt.politics.economics:10687 talk.politics.misc:199377 alt.individualism:12156 talk.politics.medicine:17717 alt.politics.reform:16744 alt.politics.radical-left:30101 talk.politics.theory:34599 Matthew L Miller (libmlm@unix.cc.emory.edu) wrote: : John Enright (jenright@interaccess.com) wrote: : : In a free market, prices are agreed upon. In a free market, nobody can : : keep raising their prices at such a rate forever. The notion is ludicrous. : : You must know that. Your resentment of those high-paid docs is leading : : you into exaggeration here. : Without those troublesome governement regulations (bane of liberatarians : everywhere), what is going to prevent doctors from colluding with one : another to keep prices high? I'm no economist, but it seems like this : would be the natural (?) result of "free" markets, i.e. capitalism : unhampered by regulation. It's happened before. There are too many doctors for this type of large scale collusion to be practical, unless it is done under the guise of govt. regulation (c.f. AMA). Most libertarians would agree that collusion is illegal, since it deprives me of my property. Besides, it is very rare that collusion actually works in the real world, the incentive to cheat is too high. Example: 10 doctors get together and set their rates for office visits to $100/hour. One of the doctors determines that if he lowers his rate to $90/hour, he will make a lot more money. The other doctors find out and lower their rates too. This same mechanism is the reason OPEC isn't very sucessful in controlling prices. It's called the "Prisoner's Dilemma". [deletia] -- Richard Farrar, the artist formerly known as "Prince" daedalus@netcom.com Home Page