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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (321865)	1/20/2007 6:12:00 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575173

I know its outlawed, but that doesn't mean its harmful, more often than not the laws against it are harmful more then the activity is itself. If they forced someone to buy then its harmful, its extortion. If its voluntary, people buy because they are better off buying then not buying. The whole notion behind capitalism is to encourage competition. Laws against monopolies and collusion among companies to restrain free trade and control prices have been outlawed for a reason. So in most communities in the US competition is fairly strong and there are usually 2-3 alternatives when buying a product. Suddenly, a disaster strikes........the alternatives are reduced to one. The owner knows he now has control of the market due to the disaster and his products are in demand so he triples his prices. How is his behavior any different than had he conspired with his competitors to artificially set a price? More importantly, how can anyone consider his behavior justified and morally acceptable given that he is taking advantage of the bad luck of his neighbors? Going back to what I said about salaries for sports stars, there is an important issue here which you seem inclined to ignore, and that is, how does such behavior on the part of the gouging owner effect society and the ties that bind us together? The US is no longer a small, agarian society. It has many big cities. In our bigness, we are losing one of the qualities that made this country great........the belief that we Americans are working together to make things better. One of the aspects that people most resented about the current crop of Republicans was their treatment of non Republicans. They behaved as if they were in their own separate universe that allowed them to step all over anyone who did not occupy their space. Your position conveys that same attitude. You may be right in terms of economic theory and would get an A from your professor, but in reality, the behavior you are encouraging or approving of is in reality screwing one's neighbor when they are down and out. And that can never be considered a good thing!