good thoughts and insights!

Not sure what you mean by America is not a free market though

My opinion is that capitalism is basically a good concept, but it doesn't work if it is completely free, there has to be some restrictions and they have to be enforced-

Jay brought up the classic example, the oil companies that would have created an unstoppable monopoly if they hadn't been reigned in

I remember being told the story of how J. Paul Getty almost pulled that off. He would move into a town, set up a gas station, sell the gas for a lower price than the other gas stations in town, actually lower than the price that he was paying for it, so he'd be losing money for a while. Then soon he would soon destroy the competition, the other gas station would lose all their business, be forced to shut down, and Getty would then be the only place in town to buy gas- at which point he would raise the price of gas, higher than before, and take his profits!

Rinse and repeat

That's the kind of thing that we need the anti-trust laws for

Dow