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Could have the SP survived without UP
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[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by ericsp</i> <br /><br />[quote]QUOTE: <i>Originally posted by futuremodal</i> <br /><br />Hmmm. The Prince Plan called for seven or eight systems? And what do we have now? Seven systems! So much for Constitutional issues! <br />[/quote] <br />The question of constitutionality does not involve the amount of class one railroads. Ther is nowhere in the Constitution that says, "There must be at least eight class one railroads operating in the United States of America". The constituionality question probably refers to the government forcing the companies to merge. <br />[/quote] <br /> <br />Yes, Eric, I was commenting on the irony of it all. The nation's public servants during the early 20th century apparently had a base understanding of the need to balance the tendencies toward either economic socialism or economic fascism as they relate to the evolution of economic sectors into oligarchies, although it seems their default tendency was toward economic socialism. (Quick, what's the difference between economic socialism and economic fascism? Under economic socialism the <i>peons </i>control the oligarchy, while under economic fascism the <i>hefes </i>control the oligarchy.) <br /> <br />Apparently the ICC's collective subconscience understood that as larger businesses swallow up smaller businesses the control of a particular economic sector would be under the control of fewer and fewer players, which ends up destroying the competitive economy if there evolves a difficulting in new market entrants. They tried to come up with solutions outside the forces of the market economy to lay the groundwork for economic balance, but such efforts did not pass constitutional muster. If they had been patient (and this assumes there would be a continuity of this prime directive over the decades up to now) they could have waited until meger requests were brought before them and used their power of denial to get the desired effect from the railroad companies. <br /> <br />Unfortunately, this prime directive was not set in stone, and thus regulators of differing viewpoints on what an economy should look like allowed marriages which resulted in de facto monopolistic and duopolistic actions on certain regions of the nation. <br /> <br />SP would have been an excellent property to divvy up among BN, UP, and SF. But apparently Linda Morgan decided that "two's company, three's a crowd" and left us in the West with this UP/BNSF duopoly, which isn't to say a duopoly is as bad as a monopoly, but it ain't nealy as beneficial for this region as a three way competition would have been.
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