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Source :  http://online.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 The above article by Peter Thiel is the best business + economics education I have ever received or can ever conceive of receiving. Something about "anti-trust" always rubbed me the wrong way -- now I know what!! In the following, I organize excerpts from his article into named sections and summarize, emphasize and/or annotate (minimally) along the way. ________________________ CAPTURING VS. CREATING VALUE Creating value isn't enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create . Airlines create value but run razor-thin margins and are unable to capture the value they create vs. Google creates far less value but is able to capture most of it. MONOPOLY VS. PERFECT COMPETITION Competition is idealized and monopoly is abhorred -- in academia and among the general public.  "Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from...

++ Indices Of Liberty ++ A view of economic, journalistic, political and civil freedoms and tax competitiveness around the world , from various sources. (The top 53 countries (ordered by rank) from the first three indices and notable countries from the last index are shown.) Sources [EFW2013] Economic Freedom of the World, Fraser Institute & CATO Institute,  http:// www.freetheworld.com/2013/ EFW2013-complete.pdf [IEF2014] Index of Economic Freedom, 2014, Heritage & WSJ,  http://www.heritage.org/ index/ [WPF2014] World Press Freedom Index, 2014, Reporters Without Borders,  http://rsf.org/index2014/ en-index2014.php [FH2014] Freedom in the World, 2014, Freedom House,  http:// www.freedomhouse.org/ report/freedom-world/ freedom-world-2014#.U3v4mvl dWpA [TF2014] International Tax Competitiveness Index, 2014, Tax Foundation,  http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/TaxFoundation_ITCI_2014_0.pdf #liberty   #tlot

We often talk of the business enterprise and the business cycle. Interestingly, the dominant political system in most developed economies may also be regarded as a cyclic enterprise. It can properly be called the statist cycle . The statist nature of these governments is the only constant, regardless of whether the particular one in question is progressive (i.e. left-wing) or conservative (i.e. right-wing), differing only in their particular emphases. It is the biased and prejudiced opinion of this author that left-wing governments are more statist than right-wing ones (although, this may be an insignificant difference in degree and not of kind, and, hence, caveat lector ). Without further ado,..... The statist cycle :  1. identify a socio-economic "problem" (real or imaginary) 2. spend money to create a new bureaucracy agency or program to fix said problem 3. (optionally, raise taxes to fund said program, or, preferably, go into debt) 4. consolidat...