Let everyone own nuclear weapons. Maybe 99.9% will use them safely. -----------------
Trump said he supports raising the minimum age to 21 on firearms (well it's something he said, he'd probably waffle and flip flop on that). Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP senator, said "raising the age limit for assault weapons may not save lives, nor have enough votes to pass." Well it is always easier to do nothing about guns for Republicans. Because they are heavily supported by the NRA, a tax exempt social welfare organization (!), when it donates it's tens of millions of dollars per election cycle 98.4% of that money goes to the GOP. It spent 30 million on Trump alone in 2016 but the graft goes throughout the Republican party - assemblymen, members of the house of representatives, Senators, governors. The Republican party is beholden to the NRA.
Republicans, who are paid to lobby for guns, will do nothing for us in regards to sensible gun control. Vote out the bums.
Let everyone own nuclear weapons. Maybe 99.9% will use them safely. -----------------
Trump said he supports raising the minimum age to 21 on firearms (well it's something he said, he'd probably waffle and flip flop on that). Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP senator, said "raising the age limit for assault weapons may not save lives, nor have enough votes to pass." Well it is always easier to do nothing about guns for Republicans. Because they are heavily supported by the NRA, a tax exempt social welfare organization (!), that donates 98.4% of it's money to the GOP.
Republicans, who are paid to lobby for guns, will do nothing for us in regards to sensible gun control. Vote out the bums.
I wonder if taxing the Hell out of assault weapons would work? A $500 license fee for each weapon might work too. That might be more palatable for the Republicans. Earmark the funds for something interesting like, I don't know, education...
Let everyone own nuclear weapons. Maybe 99.9% will use them safely. -----------------
Trump said he supports raising the minimum age to 21 on firearms (well it's something he said, he'd probably waffle and flip flop on that). Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP senator, said "raising the age limit for assault weapons may not save lives, nor have enough votes to pass." Well it is always easier to do nothing about guns for Republicans. Because they are heavily supported by the NRA, a tax exempt social welfare organization (!), that donates 98.4% of it's money to the GOP.
Republicans, who are paid to lobby for guns, will do nothing for us in regards to sensible gun control. Vote out the bums.
I wonder if taxing the Hell out of assault weapons would work? A $500 license fee for each weapon might work too. That might be more palatable for the Republicans. Earmark the funds for something interesting like, I don't know, education...
Kids killed at Sandy Hook? Republicans do nothing. They want to repeat that here. The NRA does not pay repbulicans for palatable regulation, they pay them for no regulations. The NRA has sued and has long opposed and sought to limit the passage and administration of background check rules. Trump himself repealed an Obama era rule that made it slightly more difficult for people with mental health problems to get guns.
There's no reasoning with these people. The NRA puts profits before people's lives and pays of Republicans to do nothing.
Yes, because nuclear weapons have the same collateral damage as a firearm and can easily be made in a garage also they are portable and can easy come illegally across the border, anyone can fire a nuclear missile and kill a single aggressor without any collateral damage /sarcasm
And who used nuclear weapons in history? Only the state against a country that tried many times to surrender with certain conditions like "don't dispose the royal family"(that is not a harsh demand)... The same state who sold Poland to Bolshevik communists. Also during the Cuban missile crisis, was a State that almost destroyed the world.
-------------------------------------------------
Police should exist but shouldn't be the unique defense because state is not a omnipresent god!!! Four Broward Officers Took Cover Outside Florida School As Gunman Killed 17 – Report
Economic competitive advantages will always boil the market down to a monopoly. Or at least an oligopoly.
Almost EVERY industry is DOMINATED (as in, 75%+ of the output) by, at most, half a dozen independent entities. Who cares about a hundred thousand small firms when the total of them is only 10% of the market? The big boys make policy. The big boys are what determines what daily life is like in the economy.
Not only does this comment wrongly define monopoly, but also oligopoly.
Half a dozen entities making up 75% of a market is VERY competitive.
This entire comment is a series conclusive statements devoid of any reasoning or data. If there are even 2 providers there is competition between them. Basic game theory dictates that any collusion would be short lived if any party can gain a competitive advantage.
The idea that competitive advantages will always boil the market down to a monopoly has been proven wrong by... the entire past century.
Let everyone own nuclear weapons. Maybe 99.9% will use them safely. -----------------
Trump said he supports raising the minimum age to 21 on firearms (well it's something he said, he'd probably waffle and flip flop on that). Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP senator, said "raising the age limit for assault weapons may not save lives, nor have enough votes to pass." Well it is always easier to do nothing about guns for Republicans. Because they are heavily supported by the NRA, a tax exempt social welfare organization (!), when it donates it's tens of millions of dollars per election cycle 98.4% of that money goes to the GOP. It spent 30 million on Trump alone in 2016 but the graft goes throughout the Republican party - assemblymen, members of the house of representatives, Senators, governors. The Republican party is beholden to the NRA.
Republicans, who are paid to lobby for guns, will do nothing for us in regards to sensible gun control. Vote out the bums.
I don't think making guns and alcohol legally obtainable at the same time is a great idea...
If there are even 2 providers there is competition between them. Basic game theory dictates that any collusion would be short lived if any party can gain a competitive advantage.
I'm not sure that's right. I think game theory applied to oligopolies demonstrates that, in the absence of regulation, they will almost always be better off colluding than competing. The situation is different from the perfect market hypothesis because a firm needs to take specific account of the actions of their competitors. In a competitive situation that tends to lead to price stickiness: - if one firm increases their prices there's a severe danger that others will not and gain market share as a result (so no-one wants to raise prices). - if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices).
There are of course other ways to compete and you can see a lot of that going on in oligopolistic industries (loyalty cards, advertising, sponsorship, customer service etc). You can also make an argument that the larger size of firms and the excess profits they make leads to increased R&D expenditure and more innovation. I'll leave it to you to consider whether that's the case in something like the provision of broadband in the US.
If competition is not enforced by regulators then oligopolies are likely to fall into a pattern of collusion. That can relate to specific agreements - this article details a number of examples of that in the UK. Probably more common is tacit collusion where there is in fact no contact between firms, but they still act in concert - for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm. Regulators have increasingly attacked that sort of behavior in the UK, but there have been long periods in my life where the impact of tacit collusion was perfectly obvious across a range of situations (such as pricing for petrol & other energy costs or setting of mortgage rates).
This gun control is becoming too boring, so i will argue in other points. About slavery and colonialism.
Slavery exists since the ancient world. And the world "slave" comes from "slav"(slaved by Arabs, Romans, Nordics...) slavery isn't "evil whites on pacific blacks" like the leftists portraits. Slavery existed everywhere. Arab slavery was far worse than European slavery[1] and the majority of Africans send to Americas was send by other Africans after they lose a war. Without the white man, slavery will be a reality even today. In Europe was whites who ended slavery and developed "human rights", in Americas, slavery ended by whites in almost all countries. In Brazil for example(least American country to end slavery), who ended slavery? A white blonde European princess[2] that lost his power because this was very unpopular among elites. And in Sudan, slavery existed until 2005.[3] If slavery make a country rich, Sudan should be the richest country in world.
Now colonialism. Almost all European countries din't have any colony and is truth that some British colonies are very bad today, but they aren't good before the colonization. Also, nobody talks about the good British territories. For example. In Falklands, 99,8% of population voted to be British territory[4] probably even the Argentine community that lives in Falklands voted massively to be British. Other example? Bermuda. Have a incredible GDP per capita of $89,795[5]. And some European countries din't have any colony. How many colonies did Switzerland have?Everyone talks about "western" colonization and nobody talks about Bolshevik Marxist forced annexations that was far worse than any kind of colonialism.
@ThacoBell But they are obtainable at the same time once you are of a certain age.
But let's not make a situation where they BECOME available for the first time together. We don't need situations of someone celebrating their new ability to drink and own guns simultaneously. Have one become available first, that way responsibility for one can be learned before aquiring the other.
Before sugar, slaves were more considered part of the family and there were two types of slaves - those taken from war, who were not muslim And those that were sold into the trade to pay off debts.
In the Caribbean and espcially the sugar trade, plantations needed a large work force to produce the goods for export back to England. Slavery of course was the cheapest means to do so, however, the populace on the island began seeing a problem of being out nimbered and feared rebellion.
It was at this point in time slavery changed from 'part of the household' to what most people think of slavery now with literally being worked to death (don't let a slave get too old. They are less productive and still a mouth to feed), beaten, and raped.
It took not only the Quakers, but slave uprisings on thr islands for England to abolish slavery. The slavers from the island (fearful of their lives now) packed up and headed to the Southern U.S. instead and continued the same practises they did on the islands.
For more information on this, a good read is a book called "The Sugar Barons" and shows how slavery slowly changed in the course of a couple of decades.
But this is hardly politics as slavery (as it was known) isn't happening in today's modern world.
If there are even 2 providers there is competition between them. Basic game theory dictates that any collusion would be short lived if any party can gain a competitive advantage.
I'm not sure that's right. I think game theory applied to oligopolies demonstrates that, in the absence of regulation, they will almost always be better off colluding than competing. The situation is different from the perfect market hypothesis because a firm needs to take specific account of the actions of their competitors. In a competitive situation that tends to lead to price stickiness: - if one firm increases their prices there's a severe danger that others will not and gain market share as a result (so no-one wants to raise prices). - if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices).
There are of course other ways to compete and you can see a lot of that going on in oligopolistic industries (loyalty cards, advertising, sponsorship, customer service etc). You can also make an argument that the larger size of firms and the excess profits they make leads to increased R&D expenditure and more innovation. I'll leave it to you to consider whether that's the case in something like the provision of broadband in the US.
If competition is not enforced by regulators then oligopolies are likely to fall into a pattern of collusion. That can relate to specific agreements - this article details a number of examples of that in the UK. Probably more common is tacit collusion where there is in fact no contact between firms, but they still act in concert - for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm. Regulators have increasingly attacked that sort of behavior in the UK, but there have been long periods in my life where the impact of tacit collusion was perfectly obvious across a range of situations (such as pricing for petrol & other energy costs or setting of mortgage rates).
Just so we are clear, I don't think the existence of 2 competitors alone is ideal for obvious reasons. That is the precise reason we have antitrust law. What I was arguing was that even with 2 firms, there is still some restraint on their behavior.
Indeed, we've seen many industries with only 2 firms with a greater than 75% market share (which was the OPs benchmark) that still have plenty of competition (think Coke and Pepsi, who dominate most soft drink markets).
I was talking about a market with a strong horizontal antitrust enforcement system, like we have with most industries in the United States. When people speak broadly about regulating markets, they include much more than basic antitrust law. This is what I am opposed to (at least in many cases).
About "for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm"- that only lasts until one firm (inevitably) sees the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by undercutting the lead firm. Your example of "if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices)" is rarely seen in real life, since even a short term drop in prices puts a strain on competitors. The firm most capable of eating the losses from the drop in price will have a strong incentive to undercut the competition even if they believe others will follow suit, since it will put a strain on competitors that they may not survive.
The mythis about slavery and colonialism that the left uses to push affirmative action programs in any country.
None of the facts you posted offer a rebuttal to affirmative action programs, at least those in the United States. Affirmative action has several justifications:
1. Correcting past injustices and their lingering effects 2. Correcting current discrimination 3. Promoting diversity
I think you're referring to the first one. But the fact that the Arabs ran an ugly slave trade (for what it's worth, I'm a liberal and I'm already very well aware of this fact) doesn't mean that American slavery was not a horrible institution, nor does it mean that the descendants of slaves are not worse off than their counterparts, nor does it mean that we shouldn't try compensate for the damage in the present day.
It's entirely possible for both Arab slavery and American slavery to be bad, and it's entirely possible for both of them to justify affirmative action now. It's a bit like when apologists for Japanese war crimes say "Well, Germany killed even more people during World War 2." One person's crime doesn't make another person's crime any better or any worse.
The arguments you've posted only demonstrate two things: slavery is not exclusively an American thing, and white people aren't all evil. I can think of only one time where somebody said no other nation ever practiced slavery, and even other liberals thought that person was an idiot.
There are several arguments against affirmative action:
4. The past is the past and we cannot fix it from the present 5. Current discrimination is not severe 6. Current discrimination is not located in the places where affirmative action is involved 7. Promoting diversity is not worth devaluing standards 8. Qualified majority candidates will be hurt
I'm actually not sure what to think about affirmative action. Both sides have arguments I cannot disprove (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8).
Affirmative action is intended to combat inequality. The case for it does not depend on the specific origins of that inequality.
Simple inequality of outcome based on race is typically not the basis for affirmative action programs. Most argue that they serve a restorative purpose by correcting past wrongs.
@ThacoBell But they are obtainable at the same time once you are of a certain age.
But let's not make a situation where they BECOME available for the first time together. We don't need situations of someone celebrating their new ability to drink and own guns simultaneously. Have one become available first, that way responsibility for one can be learned before aquiring the other.
What are you arguing? That people are going to celebrate their 21st birthday by buying a fifth of vodka, an AR-15 , get wasted and shoot up a school? That seems as far fetched as armed teachers doing a Wyatt Earp and blowing away armed students. Give me a break...
@Balrog99 No, nothing of the sort. But lets be real here, there ARE people who will buy their first gun and go get drunk on the same day. I doubt any mass shootings are going to come about from it, but people will get hurt due to stupidity. Imagine if drinking age and driving age were the same.
@Balrog99 No, nothing of the sort. But lets be real here, there ARE people who will buy their first gun and go get drunk on the same day. I doubt any mass shootings are going to come about from it, but people will get hurt due to stupidity. Imagine if drinking age and driving age were the same.
So are you saying that it would be worse than it is right now? It's better that kids have a few years to practice with their guns before they can have a beer? Doesn't seem logical to me.
@Balrog99 OR have them get used to alcohol and normalize their drinking habits before being able to purchase a gun. Introducing both at once is a recipe for bad accidents.
If i remember correctly there are affirmative actions in government jobs and universities in USA. Only one question, can Egon Albrecht-Lemke(Luftwaffe iron cross ace - http://military.wikia.com/wiki/Egon_Albrecht Born in Curitiba - Brazil with German and Mediterranean ancestry ) mark "hispanic" option and receive affirmative action? I don't like NS, centralized government, gun control, how they treated 'minorities', etc i an only using his as an example. He can mark "hispanic/latino" when try join on university?
Affirmative action is intended to combat inequality. The case for it does not depend on the specific origins of that inequality.
Simple inequality of outcome based on race is typically not the basis for affirmative action programs. Most argue that they serve a restorative purpose by correcting past wrongs.
I meant the moral case, not the legal one. (Especially since I know absolutely nothing about Brazilian law.) To me, questions of historical culpability are relevant but not central to the issue.
We can put history aside and still see that there are vast racial disparities in economic outcomes, both in the U.S. and in Brazil. I have never understood how a person who believes in racial equality can look at that situation and decide that nothing needs to be done about it.
@SorcererV1ct0r: No, Egon Albrecht can't mark Hispanic/Latino. He's dead. You could, though.
We can put history aside and still see that there are vast racial disparities in economic outcomes, both in the U.S. and in Brazil. I have never understood how a person who believes in racial equality can look at that situation and decide that nothing needs to be done about it.
That entirely depends on the cause of the inequality. A lot of things can have unequal results, but not be the cause of unequal treatment. For example the fact that women receive college degrees at a greater level than men in the US does not result from preferential treatment by schools, and therefore there is no cause to correct this inequality of outcome.
First, I think that gender and race are very different for these purposes. For the case of gender, I'm willing to accept that some differences in outcomes are partially the result of innate differences.
Second, are you saying that schools should only try to remedy inequality that has resulted from preferential treatment by schools? I haven't encountered that opinion before.
If there are even 2 providers there is competition between them. Basic game theory dictates that any collusion would be short lived if any party can gain a competitive advantage.
I'm not sure that's right. I think game theory applied to oligopolies demonstrates that, in the absence of regulation, they will almost always be better off colluding than competing. The situation is different from the perfect market hypothesis because a firm needs to take specific account of the actions of their competitors. In a competitive situation that tends to lead to price stickiness: - if one firm increases their prices there's a severe danger that others will not and gain market share as a result (so no-one wants to raise prices). - if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices).
There are of course other ways to compete and you can see a lot of that going on in oligopolistic industries (loyalty cards, advertising, sponsorship, customer service etc). You can also make an argument that the larger size of firms and the excess profits they make leads to increased R&D expenditure and more innovation. I'll leave it to you to consider whether that's the case in something like the provision of broadband in the US.
If competition is not enforced by regulators then oligopolies are likely to fall into a pattern of collusion. That can relate to specific agreements - this article details a number of examples of that in the UK. Probably more common is tacit collusion where there is in fact no contact between firms, but they still act in concert - for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm. Regulators have increasingly attacked that sort of behavior in the UK, but there have been long periods in my life where the impact of tacit collusion was perfectly obvious across a range of situations (such as pricing for petrol & other energy costs or setting of mortgage rates).
Just so we are clear, I don't think the existence of 2 competitors alone is ideal for obvious reasons. That is the precise reason we have antitrust law. What I was arguing was that even with 2 firms, there is still some restraint on their behavior.
Indeed, we've seen many industries with only 2 firms with a greater than 75% market share (which was the OPs benchmark) that still have plenty of competition (think Coke and Pepsi, who dominate most soft drink markets).
I was talking about a market with a strong horizontal antitrust enforcement system, like we have with most industries in the United States. When people speak broadly about regulating markets, they include much more than basic antitrust law. This is what I am opposed to (at least in many cases).
About "for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm"- that only lasts until one firm (inevitably) sees the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by undercutting the lead firm. Your example of "if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices)" is rarely seen in real life, since even a short term drop in prices puts a strain on competitors. The firm most capable of eating the losses from the drop in price will have a strong incentive to undercut the competition even if they believe others will follow suit, since it will put a strain on competitors that they may not survive.
I certainly agree you can get good competition with 2 firms - in fact I think that can often be easier than with a larger group as the business rivalry tends to get more personalized.
Predatory pricing to get rid of competitors is a possibility, but it's a risky strategy. The firm leading the price cuts may find they don't have the advantage in financial muscle they expected (for instance due to amalgamations of competitors or the introduction of new financial backers). Even if they are successful there's the possibility of damage to their market (because you may get resistance to price increases attempting to reverse the previous drops) and the possibility of attracting new entrants that prevent them getting back to previous profit levels. Collusion is much less risky than gambling you will be the survivor of a market concentration. I think it's more common for aggressive pricing strategies to be used to put off new entrants and/or bankrupt small firms than trying to put existing competitors out of business in an oligopoly.
@SorcererV1ct0r: No, Egon Albrecht can't mark Hispanic/Latino. He's dead. You could, though.
LOL.... I only used him as an example because he is obvious white. He simple was born in south america. But thanks for the answer. Affirmative actions in USA are broken like in my country.
Comments
-----------------
Trump said he supports raising the minimum age to 21 on firearms (well it's something he said, he'd probably waffle and flip flop on that). Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 GOP senator, said "raising the age limit for assault weapons may not save lives, nor have enough votes to pass." Well it is always easier to do nothing about guns for Republicans. Because they are heavily supported by the NRA, a tax exempt social welfare organization (!), when it donates it's tens of millions of dollars per election cycle 98.4% of that money goes to the GOP. It spent 30 million on Trump alone in 2016 but the graft goes throughout the Republican party - assemblymen, members of the house of representatives, Senators, governors. The Republican party is beholden to the NRA.
Republicans, who are paid to lobby for guns, will do nothing for us in regards to sensible gun control. Vote out the bums.
There's no reasoning with these people. The NRA puts profits before people's lives and pays of Republicans to do nothing.
And who used nuclear weapons in history? Only the state against a country that tried many times to surrender with certain conditions like "don't dispose the royal family"(that is not a harsh demand)... The same state who sold Poland to Bolshevik communists. Also during the Cuban missile crisis, was a State that almost destroyed the world.
-------------------------------------------------
Police should exist but shouldn't be the unique defense because state is not a omnipresent god!!!
Four Broward Officers Took Cover Outside Florida School As Gunman Killed 17 – Report
http://deadline.com/2018/02/four-broward-officers-stayed-outside-florida-school-as-gunman-killed-17-1202301523/
Half a dozen entities making up 75% of a market is VERY competitive.
This entire comment is a series conclusive statements devoid of any reasoning or data. If there are even 2 providers there is competition between them. Basic game theory dictates that any collusion would be short lived if any party can gain a competitive advantage.
The idea that competitive advantages will always boil the market down to a monopoly has been proven wrong by... the entire past century.
- if one firm increases their prices there's a severe danger that others will not and gain market share as a result (so no-one wants to raise prices).
- if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices).
There are of course other ways to compete and you can see a lot of that going on in oligopolistic industries (loyalty cards, advertising, sponsorship, customer service etc). You can also make an argument that the larger size of firms and the excess profits they make leads to increased R&D expenditure and more innovation. I'll leave it to you to consider whether that's the case in something like the provision of broadband in the US.
If competition is not enforced by regulators then oligopolies are likely to fall into a pattern of collusion. That can relate to specific agreements - this article details a number of examples of that in the UK. Probably more common is tacit collusion where there is in fact no contact between firms, but they still act in concert - for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm. Regulators have increasingly attacked that sort of behavior in the UK, but there have been long periods in my life where the impact of tacit collusion was perfectly obvious across a range of situations (such as pricing for petrol & other energy costs or setting of mortgage rates).
Slavery exists since the ancient world. And the world "slave" comes from "slav"(slaved by Arabs, Romans, Nordics...) slavery isn't "evil whites on pacific blacks" like the leftists portraits. Slavery existed everywhere. Arab slavery was far worse than European slavery[1] and the majority of Africans send to Americas was send by other Africans after they lose a war. Without the white man, slavery will be a reality even today. In Europe was whites who ended slavery and developed "human rights", in Americas, slavery ended by whites in almost all countries. In Brazil for example(least American country to end slavery), who ended slavery? A white blonde European princess[2] that lost his power because this was very unpopular among elites. And in Sudan, slavery existed until 2005.[3] If slavery make a country rich, Sudan should be the richest country in world.
Now colonialism. Almost all European countries din't have any colony and is truth that some British colonies are very bad today, but they aren't good before the colonization. Also, nobody talks about the good British territories. For example. In Falklands, 99,8% of population voted to be British territory[4] probably even the Argentine community that lives in Falklands voted massively to be British. Other example? Bermuda. Have a incredible GDP per capita of $89,795[5]. And some European countries din't have any colony. How many colonies did Switzerland have?Everyone talks about "western" colonization and nobody talks about Bolshevik Marxist forced annexations that was far worse than any kind of colonialism.
1 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade
2 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel,_Princess_Imperial_of_Brazil
3 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Sudan
4 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands#Sovereignty_dispute
5 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda
In the Caribbean and espcially the sugar trade, plantations needed a large work force to produce the goods for export back to England. Slavery of course was the cheapest means to do so, however, the populace on the island began seeing a problem of being out nimbered and feared rebellion.
It was at this point in time slavery changed from 'part of the household' to what most people think of slavery now with literally being worked to death (don't let a slave get too old. They are less productive and still a mouth to feed), beaten, and raped.
It took not only the Quakers, but slave uprisings on thr islands for England to abolish slavery. The slavers from the island (fearful of their lives now) packed up and headed to the Southern U.S. instead and continued the same practises they did on the islands.
For more information on this, a good read is a book called "The Sugar Barons" and shows how slavery slowly changed in the course of a couple of decades.
But this is hardly politics as slavery (as it was known) isn't happening in today's modern world.
https://www.state.gov/j/tip/what/
Indeed, we've seen many industries with only 2 firms with a greater than 75% market share (which was the OPs benchmark) that still have plenty of competition (think Coke and Pepsi, who dominate most soft drink markets).
I was talking about a market with a strong horizontal antitrust enforcement system, like we have with most industries in the United States. When people speak broadly about regulating markets, they include much more than basic antitrust law. This is what I am opposed to (at least in many cases).
About "for instance by all following the prices charged by a lead firm"- that only lasts until one firm (inevitably) sees the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by undercutting the lead firm. Your example of "if one firm reduces their prices others are forced to follow to retain market share, so everyone loses (and hence no-one wants to lower prices)" is rarely seen in real life, since even a short term drop in prices puts a strain on competitors. The firm most capable of eating the losses from the drop in price will have a strong incentive to undercut the competition even if they believe others will follow suit, since it will put a strain on competitors that they may not survive.
1. Correcting past injustices and their lingering effects
2. Correcting current discrimination
3. Promoting diversity
I think you're referring to the first one. But the fact that the Arabs ran an ugly slave trade (for what it's worth, I'm a liberal and I'm already very well aware of this fact) doesn't mean that American slavery was not a horrible institution, nor does it mean that the descendants of slaves are not worse off than their counterparts, nor does it mean that we shouldn't try compensate for the damage in the present day.
It's entirely possible for both Arab slavery and American slavery to be bad, and it's entirely possible for both of them to justify affirmative action now. It's a bit like when apologists for Japanese war crimes say "Well, Germany killed even more people during World War 2." One person's crime doesn't make another person's crime any better or any worse.
The arguments you've posted only demonstrate two things: slavery is not exclusively an American thing, and white people aren't all evil. I can think of only one time where somebody said no other nation ever practiced slavery, and even other liberals thought that person was an idiot.
There are several arguments against affirmative action:
4. The past is the past and we cannot fix it from the present
5. Current discrimination is not severe
6. Current discrimination is not located in the places where affirmative action is involved
7. Promoting diversity is not worth devaluing standards
8. Qualified majority candidates will be hurt
I'm actually not sure what to think about affirmative action. Both sides have arguments I cannot disprove (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8).
In fact, if that was the only justification for affirmative action programs they would be declared unconstitutional under the Equal Protections Clause (in the United States of course). You can read the two holding Supreme Court cases on this (Grutter and Gratz) here:
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/244/
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/case.html
So what are you proposing specifically?
We can put history aside and still see that there are vast racial disparities in economic outcomes, both in the U.S. and in Brazil. I have never understood how a person who believes in racial equality can look at that situation and decide that nothing needs to be done about it.
@SorcererV1ct0r: No, Egon Albrecht can't mark Hispanic/Latino. He's dead. You could, though.
Second, are you saying that schools should only try to remedy inequality that has resulted from preferential treatment by schools? I haven't encountered that opinion before.
Predatory pricing to get rid of competitors is a possibility, but it's a risky strategy. The firm leading the price cuts may find they don't have the advantage in financial muscle they expected (for instance due to amalgamations of competitors or the introduction of new financial backers). Even if they are successful there's the possibility of damage to their market (because you may get resistance to price increases attempting to reverse the previous drops) and the possibility of attracting new entrants that prevent them getting back to previous profit levels. Collusion is much less risky than gambling you will be the survivor of a market concentration. I think it's more common for aggressive pricing strategies to be used to put off new entrants and/or bankrupt small firms than trying to put existing competitors out of business in an oligopoly.