Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="Collector1966, post: 1710387, member: 17919"]Unfettered capitalism is just as bad as overfettered capitalism. The "free market" only works up to a certain point. The goal of the small business person may be to provide customers with a quality product and earn a living doing so, but over the years such people have been squeezed out of business by large corporations that increasingly seek not to provide customers with quality products, but to constantly find new ways to gain market share and maximize their profits to satisfy their big shareholders. Today, this often entails "laying off" (in other words, firing) thousands of employees, cutting the pay and benefits of remaining employees, and/or shifting production and services to low-wage, low-quality countries. In the past, unfettered capitalism in the US resulted in terrible working conditions that included child labor, payment for work in company store scrip rather than actual money, various workplace disasters like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and environmental disasters like Love Canal and Times Beach. Of course, this does not apply to Littleton, which is a different type of business. The coin market is not going to be monopolized by huge corporations, so competition will continue to work there. Nevertheless, there is a place for some regulation of the coin business as well.[/QUOTE]