Standard Oil (like Walmart today) kept its prices at rock-bottom<\/a> precisely because Rockefeller understood that if he jacked up his prices, competitors would come in and he’d lose his share of the market. <\/p>\n Only coercive monopolies — i.e. government monopolies — can fix prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n The real point, though, is that nobody — not John D. Rockefeller, not Henry Flagler, not anybody — could have foreseen that because of laissez-faire and the innovation it fosters, the competitor who would put the biggest hit on his oil-market was not in the oil business at all. <\/p>\n Do you know who it was?<\/p>\n Thomas Edison and his lightbulb, which abolished kerosene and other oil-burning light. (Petroleum, by the way, abolished whale oil.)<\/p>\n It’s called creative destruction<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a laissez-faire system, consumers, who pay their hard-earned money for the things they want, always<\/i> determine the success or failure of a given idea or product or service.<\/p>\n If you want to rid the world of Walmart — or whatever<\/a> — you must simply do away with the consumers who choose<\/i> to shop there, including, of course, all the poor people who save so much money in shopping there. <\/p>\n There’s a reason that America, vilified as she is by so much of the world, still gives by FAR the most foreign aid to the entire world. <\/p>\n There’s a reason that only America can afford such multi-trillion-dollar-per-year extravagance, decade after decade, and that reason, paradoxically, is the same reason so many people who receive America’s aid absolutely love to hate America: <\/p>\n She creates<\/i> by far the most. <\/p>\n America is the most productive.<\/p>\n Pollution, waste disposal, externalities, these, no matter what you\u2019re told by government-lovers of every stripe, these require technological solutions \u2014 not bureaucratic solutions \u2014 and laissez faire, with the vast technological superiority it creates, is not only the best system for such a thing: it\u2019s the only<\/i> system equipped to deal with technological problems. <\/p>\n \tWhich is why you see, for instance, the utter and nonsensical waste of government-sponsored catastrophes like Yucca Mountain.<\/p>\n \tIt\u2019s why government \u201csolutions\u201d often lead to UNDER-environmental protection and more cronyism. <\/p>\n \tIt\u2019s why from 1950 through 1970, the amount of volatile organic compounds and carbon monoxide in the air fell by more than 20 percent, even though total vehicle miles traveled increased by 120 percent \u2014 this, before the 1970 Clean Air Act and government involvement. <\/p>\n \tIt was all brought about by means of better, more efficient technology. It was therefore adopted naturally, without coercion. <\/p>\n \tThis is also why the level of sulfur dioxide in the air began falling as early as 1920.<\/p>\n \tAnd it\u2019s why the total amount of airborne particulate matter has been reduced by 79 percent since 1940.<\/p>\n \tTechnology, which comes about through wealth-creation, is why water pollution has decreased as world-wide wealth has increased.<\/p>\n And that’s only the beginning …
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