Capitalism 50, Dow Chemical

The story of Dow vs the German Brominkonvention.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Mrcropper
• capitalism
• series
• folsom
• dow
• 1800's
• objectivism
• ayn
• rand
• bromine

[zardozcs]

Excellent! Dow was one smart cookie. How many businessmen today understand the free market as well as he did? They'res too many Taggarts in the boardrooms these days.

[jwoodswce]

This was a great story, and reminds me of how cross-subsidy dependencies within government 'protected' industries are making them ripe for the taking by capitalists.

[Zeitschen]

Do you have any idea why indices and graphs giving profit levels across sectors, nationally, are not easy to find? Profit, that engine of growth and desire, is not televised but is hidden away in the cellar.

Yes you can get fractional blow by blow accounts of daily prices, consumer prices, house prices, oil price, currency, stock indices but profit figures, the most important of them all, nothing!

[grantsinmypants2]

Sorry, I my comment wasn't clear. What I mean is that the American philosophical attitude towards progress is "ever upward" whereas the German attitude is "halt!"

It's like they see, to some degree, the benefits of science and technology and practice them, but they just can't resist the temptation to call it quits, monopolize, and remain content in their traditions and culture.

It's a peculairly German trait.  It's what Hitler exploited.

[grantsinmypants2]

This was the true "First World War."

As an aside, I thought that that comment about the attitudes of German scientists was interesting psycho-epistemologically. It's as if the Enlightenment has forced them to accept a certain degree of it, but by God they weren't going to accept all of it. So they obstinantly held onto this idea of "science" without regard to application.

Kind of like Herr Kant's "philosophy" without regard to reality - and dressed up in Enlightenment terminology.

[legendre007]

[2] Likewise, in *Antitrust and Monopoly*, D.T. Armentano proves that collusion on price & service quality didn't take place in the supposedly landmark antitrust cases against collusion -- the Addyston Pipe case & the 1950s General Electric case.

[legendre007]

[1] This is 1 example among many showing that, when gov. regulations don't forbid competition, attempts by firms in the same industry to form cartels & collude on price routinely fail.

In his otherwise-silly *Triumph of Conservatism*, leftwing collectivist Gabriel Kolko gives examples of this from the late 1800s to early 1900s in the mining, insurance, oil, & steel industries.

[nine9s]

Haha, what an awesome story!