For over 100 years, progressives have claimed natural monopolies were about to impoverish everyone if allowed to persist. In every case, the companies they claimed were monopolies had many competitors and were delivering the lowest prices and best quality products to their customers available anywhere in the market.

Invariably, calls for government intervention came from the alleged monopoly's competitors, citing "unfair competition," rather than the public. Standard Oil was one of the earliest examples. Although it had hundreds of competitors at the time the government broke it up and had lowered its prices for over 20 consecutive years, its competitors were still making the argument that it would eventually drive all competition out of the market and have its way with a defenseless public.

This canard still persists to this day, even though it has never happened in any remotely free market (precisely this happens in government-granted monopolies, like EpiPen, whose competitors were artificially kept out of the market by the FDA).

"Just wait until they get rid of their competitors and Walmart will be starving us all!" say the progressive left. But decades later, Walmart still has competitors and still has the lowest prices. That's because there is always capital on the sidelines eager to enter a market where profits are available at lower prices.

Certainly, some aspects of the Big Tech censorship controversy are different. Since the services are generally provided without a requirement for monetary reimbursement, there is no pricing mechanism to regulate it. But here certainly is ample competition that Republicans, rather than Democrats, now conveniently ignore in their own rationalizations for government regulation to address the censorship.

I had a chance to speak with longtime Ron Paul ally, former Campaign for Liberty President, and current Senior Fellow of the Market Institute Norm Singleton on this controversy on today's episode of Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.

I also have links to some of Norm's writing on the subject on the show notes page. I highly recommend taking the time to read these. 

As I write this, the correction in the stock markets continue and the monthly BLS nonfarm payroll report doesn't give Jay Powell any reason to change course yet. According to farcical Keynesian reasoning, too many people employed causes the economy to "overheat," and that's what causes inflation. And today wer are told 428,000 new jobs were supposedly created in April.

Our economic future is completely dependent upon whether one man decides to keep his word about fighting inflation or caves in to the people he really works for - on Wall Street - for more cheap money.

It shouldn't be this way, but it is. To really understand how the monetary system works and why it works that way, download a free copy of my e-book, It's the Fed, Stupid.

It's also available in paperback. Please consider picking up a copy or two for a friend: