"Lüko Willms" wrote in message

Am 03.01.2012 18:56, schrieb Graham Nye:

Why would Recliner want to deny writing that?

I don't care for the motives, only for the facts: he did deny it.

It's an entirely reasonable thing to have written in its context,
which was discussion of a state-owned railway company.

I have the opposite opinion thinking that it is absolutely
ridiculous. As you might have noted.

It is you who has sought to move the goal posts by introducing
discussion of one-person owned businesses,

No, that was again this Mr. Recliner (or who ever) who claimed that
once there is only one owner of a company, that turns this company
into a monopoly which is to be fought.

Lüko, I know that English is not your native tongue, so perhaps you're
confused by the English language terms "ownership" and "monopoly". The
ownership of a company has nothing to do with whether it's a monopoly.
So, the fact that a single shareholder owns a company doesn't make it a
monopoly, and the fact that it has many shareholders doesn't mean it's
not a monopoly. What makes it a monopoly is when there is a lack of
competition.

So, DB is clearly a German nationalised company wherever it operates,
but that does not, of itself make it a monopoly. Arguably, it has
something close to a monopoly in Germany, but not when it operates in
the UK or France. In the same way, DOR (the operator of the EC
franchise) and DRS are UK state-owned companies, but neither is a
monopoly.

In strongly socialist countries, the two usually go together, as the
state does not permit others to compete with companies it owns, whereas
in properly regulated capitalist countries, the state tries to prevent
monopolies from forming by preventing market leaders (however many
shareholders they may have) from buying up all the competition. If they
are able to get away with doing that, they tend to become less
efficient, charging more and delivering less than if they had to fear
competitors. That's what happens when you have crony capitalism.

Now please will you answer my question about workers' rights in north
and south Korea? When the Kim dynasty eventually collapses, do you
think the workers in north Korea will complain at being offered the same
workers' rights as those in the south?