eBay Accused Of Violating Antitrust Laws

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With as many qualified people in this country currently looking for work, it is hard to believe eBay has to poach employees from another company.

According to the complaint, which was filed by the U.S. Justice Department, eBay and Intuit had an agreement not to raid each other's businesses for talent. EBay, the online marketplace, is headquartered in San Jose; Intuit is based in nearby Mountain View. "This agreement harmed employees by lowering the salaries and benefits they might otherwise have commanded, and deprived these employees of better job opportunities at the other company," lawyers for the government said, in a copy of the suit obtained by Bloomberg.
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What agreements they have with other companies is none of the state's business.
 
I was going to respond, but then I realized you were a reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate, progressive/liberal citizen just having fun saying what your antithesis would say.
 
Why would eBay and Inuit enter into an agreement like that? They're not even in the same field

That's like an agreement between the laundry mat and the car dealer ship.
 
Of all the anti-trust stuff eBay has done, this is the one they're busting them for? Lol.

Why don't we start with them blocking alternative
 
This is like me and you having an agreement to not touch each others cookies out of the cookie jar that mom bought us. Neither of us technically "own" them, but then one of us calling the federal police because I was able to convince the cookie to come be delicious in my mouth (just assume they are magic cookies)

The state has no business here -- and the fact it's an issue is now going to waste tax payers money just to "figure it all out"

If I work for X and Z comes along and offers me a more attractive work package, it's nobodies business if I want to ditch and go work for Z.

It sounds like someone is just mad they are having their toys taken away.
 
collegeboy69us said:
If I work for X and Z comes along and offers me a more attractive work package, it's nobodies business if I want to ditch and go work for Z.
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That is not what this is about.

This is about two mega-corporations saying that they will not compete against one another directly.

Free market capitalism cannot work when very large corporations decide to price-fix goods that combined they represent somewhat of a monopoly on, at least at a local level, in this case jobs in a certain field in a certain area.

I am a libertarian, but even libertarians recognize that anti-trust laws need to exist and need to be enforced. And it is in fact one of the VERY FEW things that the government should be doing, and otherwise practice laissez faire economic policy.
 
Ducman69 said:
That is not what this is about.

This is about two mega-corporations saying that they will not compete against one another directly.

Free market capitalism cannot work when very large corporations decide to price-fix goods that combined they represent somewhat of a monopoly on, at least at a local level, in this case jobs in a certain field in a certain area.

I am a libertarian, but even libertarians recognize that anti-trust laws need to exist and need to be enforced. And it is in fact one of the VERY FEW things that the government should be doing, and otherwise practice laissez faire economic policy.
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I know of no libertarian theory that would justify "anti-trust" laws. The core of libertarianism is the non-aggression principle; agressing upon a corporation's private property in the absence of them having committed an initiation of force is aggression and therefore totally illegitimate. You might want to read up on what Rothbard had to say (he was, after all, the father of modern libertarianism).

Where do you think large corporations derive their power from? It is the state that says you cannot hold the owner of a company liable for his or her own misdeeds ("limited liability"). It is the state that gives massive subsidies and handouts to large corporations through corporate welfare. It is the state that allows corporations to steal other people's property through eminent domain (Kelo v. City of New London). It is the state that crafts regulations, in concert with their corporate sponsors, designed to limit competition and put their smaller competitors out of business (Such as all of the CronyCare(TM) Waivers).

The simple truth of the matter is that, like large government, large corporations are unsustainable absent the coercive advantages they are given by the state. Smaller, nimbler, more efficient competitors would run circles around them. There are very few natural monopolies; most monopolies are, in fact, the result of collusion between the state and the corporation (such as AT&T).
 
Sorry for those of you saying the state has no business here, but this is one of the things the government should be doing. Not only do no-poach agreements like this harm the employees, but it decreases the natural cost of doing business giving the companies an ill-gotten advantage in costs compared to potential competitors. They need to be smacked hard for this (and a lot of other things).
 
damicatz said:
The simple truth of the matter is that, like large government, large corporations are unsustainable absent the coercive advantages they are given by the state. Smaller, nimbler, more efficient competitors would run circles around them. There are very few natural monopolies; most monopolies are, in fact, the result of collusion between the state and the corporation (such as AT&T).
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I am a liberal/progressive, and if someone like Ron Paul and an entire new supporting congress was elected, and they were ready to completely throw out all the government-political-corporate collusion and install a libertarian free-market system, I would support them be willing to support them on that one point in favor to the current system (which is a corrupt anti-people system under the standards of any true conservative or progressive). I seem to remember many times we had a system close to that, and there was still huge corruption, poverty, and inequality. However, let's just forget about the past. But I would ask them a question, and the answer would decide my stance.

Are libertarian conservatives ready to, at the same time, provide some sort of societal guarantee (you guys are free to pick the method in which it is done, but the key word is guarantee):
IF the government-free, libertarian, free market, laissez faire capitalist system does not work, society will "catch" the law-abiding (nope, don't try and say i am talking about criminals), willing-and-seeking-to-work (nope, not talking about "free-riders"), American citizens (nope, not talking about the illegal immigrants - one country cannot support the entire Earth) that fall through the "benefits" of the new system?

Or will it be:
IF it does not work (as it has not so far in varying forms throughout all of the history of trade in humankind), those in squalor, those working slave-like hours, the sick, the dying, and the rest of the miserable and suffering are going to be told, "oh well, sorry...some of us ended up being the haves...and some of you turned out to be the have-nots...it didn't work as well as we had hoped."

If it is not the second, I would really like to hear from any libertarian/conservative what the plan is for the first option - because I have yet to hear it.
 
HardwareSearcher said:
I am a liberal/progressive, and if someone like Ron Paul and an entire new supporting congress was elected, and they were ready to completely throw out all the government-political-corporate collusion and install a libertarian free-market system, I would support them be willing to support them on that one point in favor to the current system (which is a corrupt anti-people system under the standards of any true conservative or progressive). I seem to remember many times we had a system close to that, and there was still huge corruption, poverty, and inequality. However, let's just forget about the past. But I would ask them a question, and the answer would decide my stance.

Are libertarian conservatives ready to, at the same time, provide some sort of societal guarantee (you guys are free to pick the method in which it is done, but the key word is guarantee):
IF the government-free, libertarian, free market, laissez faire capitalist system does not work, society will "catch" the law-abiding (nope, don't try and say i am talking about criminals), willing-and-seeking-to-work (nope, not talking about "free-riders"), American citizens (nope, not talking about the illegal immigrants - one country cannot support the entire Earth) that fall through the "benefits" of the new system?

Or will it be:
IF it does not work (as it has not so far in varying forms throughout all of the history of trade in humankind), those in squalor, those working slave-like hours, the sick, the dying, and the rest of the miserable and suffering are going to be told, "oh well, sorry...some of us ended up being the haves...and some of you turned out to be the have-nots...it didn't work as well as we had hoped."

If it is not the second, I would really like to hear from any libertarian/conservative what the plan is for the first option - because I have yet to hear it.
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Libertarians are not conservatives. We don't care who you have sex with (so long as it is consensual), we don't care who (or how many people) you marry, we don't care if you open your store, hunt or buy alcohol on Sundays, we don't care if you use birth control or have an abortion and we have no desire to return to some idealized version of the 1950s in which Victorian-era morality is forced upon people. We are also actually fiscally conservative, unlike the "conservatives" who seem to have no problem spending an unlimited amount of other people's money stooging for AIPAC, the military industrial complex, and their corporate masters in the form of corporate welfare.

Going into a detailed overview of libertarianism is outside the scope of this thread as I could write entire books in response to your questions. For that, I would highly recommend reading Rothbard's "For A New Liberty", which is available, in full, here. For healthcare, this is informative.
 
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