From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2009-04-22T21:59:10+09:00
Subject: Re: [OFFTOPIC] Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth

On 19 Apr 2009, at 09:29, Chad Perrin wrote:
> An HMO wouldn't exist in a free market, because "free market"  
> implies the
> necessary absence of governmental intervention causing the existence  
> of a
> corporation to be possible.  Corporations are, by definition, legal
> "persons" -- something that sure as shit doesn't exist without someone
> with a bunch of guns going around making sure everybody plays along.
> That doesn't sound very "free" to me.

The whole point of Joint Stock Companies in the first place was to  
create and maintain legal trade monopolies, and as we see at every  
turn any market system which places undue reliance upon them as the  
foundation of a "free" market becomes heavily distorted. However even  
large corporations are bounded by the laws of thermodynamics and will  
eventually fail, which of course is what a bubble crash such as the  
current one is supposed to achieve. Unfortunately governments insist  
on bailing out failing corporations when they're sufficiently  
politically influential and that exacerbates matters in the long term:  
just look at the disastrous history of nationalised industries in the  
UK...


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason