But what if you only want to buy $10,000 worth of common stock? You could spend hours in the library tracing the history or go on line. But would you find out what corporation really owns HomeDepot?

You could find out even if you didn't buy stock, because public corporations must be publicly registered.

Can I bring the discussion to Non American problems and solutions. An EU meeting fail to agree on a bail out in Europe. However Ireland, Greece and Germany have already agree to gurantee private bank deposits. This is a form of subisy because it is not the banks dong this.

This in turn has cause a run on banks of countries who did not make this guarntee as people move their deposits to countries which have this guarntee. Soon all European countries will have to do the same.

Some banks including Germany second bank havt been nationalised. This is a better solution than just buying their debts.

On the point of protection. This does limit competition but sometimes is essential to keep a local industry going. Most countries have restriction of routes for foreign carriers to protect their national airline. I am not sure of the position in the USA but our government does restrict foreign airlines on the Australia-USA route.

Protection is not always good , and Australia is a Free Trade country in most things like agriculture but sometimes protection is needed in specific industries.

buying $10K worth of common stock won't bring down the system, nor create a monopoly. It's when you want to buy ALL the common stock (or at least 51%) of a company similar to the one you mentioned AND you own a rival chain is when the problems start. At that point, leveraging off your increasing assets base, you then go and buy ALL the hardware chains in the US and (work with me here) the world and all the (say) nail manufacturing plants. You can then charge what you want for a nail, if all nails are $10 each (say) in your hardware chain and you have no competitors: monopoly

You grow rich at the expense of the people. That's what Capitalism's ultimate goal is - monopoly. That's why Govt. regulates very strictly re super-mergers and takeovers.

Helice, thanks for the considered response.

Yes, I will take your suggestion of the moral high ground, I suppose I was trying to operate on the moral ground that was level with the rest of the FM correspondents, particularly a vocal few foaming-at-the-mouth rabid right Republicans.

I note your proposal for “working on” the slant of these pages, In that interest, may I suggest the following, looking forward to seeing your intervention in other instances within this forum, notably the following:

- the use of the offensive epithet “kooks” in the signature line of one of the more vocal correspondents;
- the comment in another signature line regarding Millcreek – presumably regarding manure spreaders – a term which impugns all FM correspondents by implying that their output is manure and therefore needs handling.

Now does my moral ground look high in this?

Yes, I note the “ignore” button. I also wonder, at 11.30 pm when I have finished the household chores after a big day at work dealing with difficult people and I switch on the PC to see what the good burghers and citizens of the US and the world are thinking, and perhaps attempt to enrich the debate with an Antipodean flavour, there is another button open to me, the “delete” button over the FM icon on my computer’s workspace. Tempting, sometimes.

Over to you.

Excuse my interruption here, since I would, in other circumstances, never interrupt Helice. But, can't we get back to the topic--the end of capitalism?

You might start with Aus's op, read the pertinant replies, and go from there.

Draeco, the problem with your scenario is this...Whats to stop me or you or me and you from deciding we do not want to pay the inflated nail price and so we will start our own chain of hardware stores selling nails and our own nail manufacturing plant? If the monopoly is in fact selling nails at an inflated price we could certainly undercut their price and stll make a profit. The lure of that potential profit can be used to attract investors to our venture.

The market saturation of a monopoly makes it hard to do that. Look at Microsoft, and tell me that market saturation and domination, makes no difference to potential competition.