Sibirsky wrote:A competing firm for the poor.
And what stops the existing firm from wiping out the competing firm? Small start up businesses do not pop into existence fully formed. If IBM had their own private security forces, they could have wiped Apple or Microsoft off the map the moment they became big enough to be noticed.
Competing firms. Generally, shooting potential customers is not good business practice.
Not true. You only have to shoot a few for the rest to fall into line. Better to live on your knees then die on your feet.
The market stops it. A new, better, cheaper, more innovative competitor springs up.
Do you seriously think there are no barriers to market entry? If you don't like gas prices, sure you can start up your own gas company. All you need is an oil field, an oil rig to extract that oil, a refinery to make the oil into gasoline, and a series of gas stations to sell that oil at a lower price, and enough money to build these things and pay people to staff them. Infrastructure like that doesn't come out of nowhere. It isn't cheap. And it doesn't spring up overnight. So the number of people who can create competing oil businesses are very limited, and they're far more likely to be rich already.
The same thing holds true for a security firm. You need workers, weapons, and people who know how to use those weapons. Trained soldiers are far more likely to already be working for one of the existing firms. The monopolies the start up hopes to overturn will have more experience, a larger client base, and better weaponry. What stops them from simply wiping out your startup security firm? What stops them from using their cash to hire away the best soldiers?
Where were unlimited vacations 10 years ago? Now they are a tiny, but growing trend. Where were multiple on premises restaurants? Now they exist.
Those exist in an economy with government regulations where the state has a monopoly on the means of force. You're proposing a theoretical society where the government has no means of enforcing law, it's all up to private security firms owned by corporations. What stops corporations from doing what they exist to do, and drive competitors out of business? In America, anti-trust legislation and government power prevents monopolies from emerging. If they no longer have this kind of authority, what stops it then?
Bad publicity. Competing firms.
Bad publicity can report on these things, but they can't stop it. Look at North Korea. There's no limit to the amount of bad publicity they've gotten. Does that mean the people of North Korea are no longer starving? Look at Darfur. The Sudanese government got a ton of bad publicity for waging a campaign of genocide. Has that stopped them? How about the Berlin Wall? There was no limit to bad publicity. Does that mean the wall was brought down immediately after the Communists built it? Simply spreading knowledge of something isn't enough. People also need to get off their asses and do something about it. But you seem to think that people will stop behaving badly as long as someone's watching them, like a kid trying to steal from the cookie jar.
What if they don't care about public opinion?
Or forcing all the local businesses to pay in company scrip that's worthless anywhere else? For that matter, you act like money will be accepted anywhere in the country. But money is guaranteed by the government. Without a government enforcing what is currency and what isn't, what's to stop people from issuing their own currency? That's what company stores did, they paid their workers in company cash that was only accepted in company stores. If the workers tried to leave for a better job, they would invalidate their entire life savings because they would be in an area where company cash wasn't accepted.
If money is guaranteed by the government, why does it's value continue to decline? That's a shit guarantee. I want my money back. I don't have an issue with competing currencies.
You don't have an issue with your job paying you currency that's only acceptable at their stores? You whine about currency declining, but you completely ignore how it actually has value.
Again, bad publicity, the media, watchdog groups would prevent the sort of thing you talk about.
How? Name one case where bad publicity stopped an unfair business practice without government intervention?
Again, you keep invoking your little collection of libertarian magic words: "Profit motive! Start up firms! Wingardium Leviosa! Free Markets! Abracadabra! Competition! Finite Incantatem!" You don't explain how these little startup firms will survive when there's nothing stopping existing monopolies from outright murdering their competitors.
