While a very small handful of hardline libertarians would think so, I don't think there are "many" Americans who claim to want a "truly free market" to the extent where behavior like that described here would be legal. My guess, if it were polled, would be no more than 20% support for these kinds of collusion agreements being legitimate; certainly not a majority in support. Americans generally don't consider the unrestrained "truly free market", full of blackballing, price-fixing, insider trading, monopoly leverage, retaliation, dumping, racial covenants, and all the rest of the late-19th-century fine business practices, to be a legitimate part of the American form of capitalism.
Even in the libertarian-leaning tech community, you'd be hard-pressed to rustle up majority support for Microsoft's 1990s-era OEM strongarming, where they retaliated against suppliers who shipped competing operating systems like Linux--- which would be perfectly fine behavior in an unrestrained free market.
Guess all you want, and I'll do likewise. My guesses are based off the fact that virtually every one of my fellow Americans I talk to don't understand why we have antitrust laws in the first place, and think the government getting involved in these matters is bad, right up until it bites them in the ass personally. Then, of course, it's witchhunt time.
As a very hardline libertarian, read anarchist, I disagree wholeheartedly with this statement. Even in the most libertarian leaning circles people like at least a little government regulation.
I say this as a person who was born and raised in Texas and attends gun shows regularly. The people in attendance are the kind with automatic rifles (very very illegal), the ones who pay for all their items with gold, want to succeed from the US, or the kind who think the "NWO" is a very real possibility, and even they feel safer with at least a little government protection.
One of ex-GF's had a tshirt that read "Permain Basin Gun Club. We don't call the police". Even her family believed in gov regulations for big business and finance.
As much as I wished more Americans were libertarian leaning the truth is that they are not.
With which statement do you disagree, exactly? Because all I'm saying is what I've observed. Unless you were present when I made these observations and have a better memory than I do, arguing with me about it isn't exactly going to be productive, is it?
I can see varying opinions on antitrust laws (especially depending on how you phrase the question), but I have more trouble believing that most Americans are in favor of a completely unrestricted free market. Unless the people I've come into contact with are completely unrepresentative, I'd be really surprised if there were majority support for proposals like, "insider trading should be legalized" and "it should be legal for businesses to discriminate against employees based on their race".
There is nothing free about "he who has the gold makes the rules." This seems a bit counter-intuitive to many who are new to the libertarian philosophy, but once past the "tea party 2.0" stage, I think most "libertarians" understand and agree with this.
I'm not clear why people are dragging "libertarian" into it. Most people I know wouldn't describe themselves as libertarian, and certainly aren't in their belief system. Libertarians do not have a lock on advocacy of the free market. The most right-wing, Christian-conservative, anti-abortion, pro-war-on-drugs, anti-gay (in the lock them up or kill them sense), I-get-to-decide-how-you-live-your-life man I know is also the one that goes the most apoplectic when government regulates economic matters.
Count me in as one hardline anarcho-capitalist / libertarian who is opposed to government intervention in something like this. I oppose anything like "government" that purports to do anything more than act as a collective extension to our innate right to self-defense; and take the Zero Aggression Principle seriously.
A government is nothing but a concentration of power.
In this case these companies are creating a centre of power that is defacto no different from if a de jure government had stepped in with rules against poaching - they represent such a huge market power that their collusion results in a very real exertion of power on everyone else.
Being against government intervention without being against corporate intervention is either naive or hypocritical depending on what your basis for it is - history demonstrates just how willing unchecked corporations are to oppress and restrict individual rights in the face of lacking government intervention.
In other words: If you take away the government intervention without also weakening corporate power, you're replacing a master that is at least subject to some oversight with warring masters that would not be.
If you reduce government sufficiently, there wouldn't be any corporations, as corporations are an artificial construct created by the State. Whether that would be a Good Thing or not is an open question, but don't make the mistake of believing that libertarian views automatically equate to (accepting|endorsing|liking) big, evil, greedy, abusive corporations.
Also never mind that corporations, as we know them today, would likely never become as large and powerful as they do, without the corrupt collusion between corporations and government.
As for oversight of government... please. That sounds good in theory, but in practice it's all but nil. It took an unprecedented Internet-powered mass movement just to derail SOPA/PIPA... and they'll almost certainly come back later, sneak in the back door (attached to a defense spending bill or something) and become law. And this is the same government that assumes the power to simply label someone a terrorist and disappear them with no due process.
I'd prefer to reduce the influence of both government and $BIG_MEGACORPs in my life, but since governments reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force (well, until they contract it out to Blackwater or whoever), I'd rather start there.
If you "reduce government sufficiently" without reigning in corporations at the same time, there is nothing to prevent the organization of de facto corporations.
Corporations are an artificial construct of a state, true, but the only reasons it was "necessary" to invent them was that the states of the time did have enough power to otherwise enforce laws directly on the members of makeshift, de facto attempts at structuring something like a corporation. Reducing government power might remove de jure corporations, but it does not take away the ability to structure de facto corporations. The lack of legal recognition don't stop crime syndicates from organizing, for example (not that I mean to imply all corporations are as bad as crime syndicates).
> Also never mind that corporations, as we know them today, would likely never become as large and powerful as they do, without the corrupt collusion between corporations and government.
That presupposes that a new mechanism is put in place for keeping them in check, or you're taking away the one thing that presents them from setting themselves up as de facto governments.
Note that we agree on minimizing government. But I find the idea of doing so without popular control of corporations abhorrent - at least the governments I've lived under adhere to a basic system of justice, but large corporations unchecked by threats of force from the public - whether directly or through a government - would have no need to.
> That sounds good in theory, but in practice it's all but nil.
I have far more insight into what my government does than what I can legally get into most corporations. So while popular oversight of governments by no means is great, popular oversight over corporations is far worse, and what little there is is only there because of government intervention.
> but since governments reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force (well, until they contract it out to Blackwater or whoever), I'd rather start there.
By doing so you're just transferring that power to the richest corporations, unless you at the same time dismantle them.
Libertarian views assume that free markets regulate themselves basically due to perfect competition. (Trying to keep this short and simple.)
Realistically, you do not always have perfect competition and you have problems with monopoly, oligopoly, etc. Firms are potent enough that their decisions can manipulate markets, and in this it would be labor markets. (Perfect competition assumes that no single firm can manipulate markets.)
Libertarians oppose a government presence in markets because they believe the result is inefficiently functioning markets, and we are all worse off.
In this case, the firms are manipulating labor markets so that they behave inefficiently to the advantage of the manipulative firms and disadvantage of labor. (This is usually where people try to justify labor unions as a counter to the influence of firms.)
Even in the libertarian-leaning tech community, you'd be hard-pressed to rustle up majority support for Microsoft's 1990s-era OEM strongarming, where they retaliated against suppliers who shipped competing operating systems like Linux--- which would be perfectly fine behavior in an unrestrained free market.