A New Rothbard Book

It's The Progressive Era, about that grotesquely mis-named period surrounding the year 1900; and it's Murray Rothbard at his best. I've not read it all yet, for there's a great deal to digest, but today's ZGBlog offers a review of the first few chapters.
 
Strongly recommended!

Comments

Samarami's picture
    "...monopolies can not long survive without government support..."

I suggest that monopolies cannot even come into existence in a free market -- free of all government interference or "regulation" Too many enterprising individuals in the wings ready to come up with better and less costly alternatives.

You need to be good to be free. But anybody can be free. Sam

Jim Davies's picture

Good point, Sam. Sometimes they can get very close, though, and stay around for a while.  Not long, for the reasons you give. At its peak, IBM had about 70% of the mainframe market. How much of the on-line retail market is now held by Amazon? - and of the operatiing system market, by Microsoft?
 
Contrast the first-class mail market, the road market, the national "defense" market, the "education" market... every one, a monopoly and every one, operated by government or under its close protection.