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I donīt think itīs fair to shut down business B through force just because business A canīt stay profitable anymore.
Once again, no one is suggesting that. But I do think it's important to recognize that capitalism doesn't inherintly lead to the best of all situations. Unfettered it can easily lead to a situation where there are a few rich and many poor with no opportunity to better their situation.

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Iīd shudder in a world with only Wal-mart too, but the great thing about a free market is itīs free.
The great thing about a free market is it allows for many people to try many different things all at once so we generally get a higher quality product. But this by nature means that all those trying things that don't work are going to fail. It's economic Darwinism and it's brutal. However, it does allows us to get some pretty neat stuff.

It should be noted, though, that while it yields better stuff, it doesn't necessarily yield the BEST stuff. The empeg is a phenominal product which (for whatever reason) didn't find a sustainable market. Even if it's not an economic winner, it's still one of the best (THE best?) mp3 players of our time. Windows, on the other hand, is certainly not the best operating system we could come up with, and yet it is inescapable.

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Itīs not like anyone is being forced to shop there; itīs just so damn convenient that sometimes you do.
And that is the quandry. People don't shop with an eye on sustaining the economic world around them- they do what makes sense for the moment and for them personally. This is why the government gets invovled: to try and preserve the world we really want and capitalism won't naturally provide- unfortunately that's a dangerous game with a whole different set of problems. I think the most important thing is not to be committed to a system, because they each have their downsides. You have to know their weaknesses and try to put policies in place to strengthen them.
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-Jeff
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings; they did it by killing all those who opposed them.