NationStates Jolt Archive

I will not submit this proposal until my current one is finished with legislation. I would like your opinions on this before it is submitted so it can be revised. Thanks in advance.



IAMO – International Antitrust and Monopolization Organization

As a representative of the small nation of The Dominion of Anward, I have little concern that my nation will be monopolizing other countries with our businesses. However, there are many countries in which companies such as Microsoft, and DeBeers are based, and are in control their respective markets at an international level. This level of control puts out any competition my country can produce, before a company can even be founded. Right now all I can do under current antitrust laws, is impose a fine, or ban the product from my nation. However imposing a fine on a large company that's gross income rivals that of smaller nations would do no good, and in the same case, banning the product from my country is also not an option. I propose that we put an end to International Monopolizations of products in UN member nations. My proposal asks the following to be implemented:


1. An organization be created under the UN Security Council that would be in charge of assessing potential monopolies, and determining the course of action. Then reporting their assessment to the UN Security Council where a majority vote be the determinant. In the event a monopoly is decided, then the UN Security Council will ask that they cease all actions found to be the cause of the monopoly. They are given then 6 months to change before the UN would impose restrictions on their international business practices, the severity of which to be determined with the level of compliance.

2. A UN sponsored policy, in which Governments are encouraged to lend money to a struggling company, within their own national borders, at a discounted interest rate, a minimum of 0.05%, and maximum of 2%. However, in order to prevent abuse, this company may not have grossed over 5 million USD in the previous year, or 2 million USD by July of the current year. Also this option will not be given to offshoots of a existing company.

But while an international board of competition would appear to be a good thing it may turn out to be just another layer of administration. The boards of competition today are national and regional because most monopolies are national or regional. There are very few global ones.

Also, asking companies to cease all actions that has lead to the monopoly is like asking them not to compete! Instead, the companies should refrain from EXPLOITING their monoply. This means disallowing excessive profit margins and certain measures to keep out competitors.

Actually disallowing actions should ony be relevant in the case of mergers and acquisitions that cannot be allowed (IRL: This is how most boards work).

Finally, I see no reason to tie this issue together with a business subsidy idea. Pinthazar detests business subsidies and while we recognize the right of other nations to introduce them we will impose tariffs on any product that we deem to be produced or marketed with givernment subsidized funds. I would hope this issue could be removed from the resolution alltogether.


*Oh - edit: I am of course PINTHAZAR. Onevoice is a puppet...*

Good topic, but where is the fun in reading it? Can we have a few humourfull examples inserted and a little quirkiness added (in line with the games authors original ideas?
Then, Bahgum would be all for it!! Good luck.

Please comment on this.

The ever purchasing yet hardly creating nation of Berkylvania is confused by this proposal in conjuction with your previous initiative, namely the establishment of international patent/copyright laws and organizations. It seems that the intents of the two proposals are at loggerheads. You claim to want to protect intellectual property, but then also want to stop monopoly. From the wording of your two proposals, it would almost seem as if the two newly created agencies would be working against each other: Agency A makes sure you have a right to profit from your intellectual property while Agency B insists that you only do it in a small way.

This proposal also fiats in some nebulous agency that in some way, shape or form, with some poorly defined source of funding, attempts to enforce a rather broad and vaugue mandate. When you propose the creation of entirely new, world-spanning regulatory boards, you must outline not only their purpose, but also where they come from. Otherwise, you are asking my country to write a blank check to protect the economic viability of another country that I may or may not give two figs about. You are also asking me to willfully submit to an organization who's aims, justifications and policies are unclear at best.

Finally, we of Berkylvania are concern that the spirit of this proposal violates the idea of a free market. While monopolies are perhaps to be discouraged, rarely do they exist in perpetuity. Additional advancements or alternative processes tend to make them crumble in very short time scales. Therefore, it is unclear why successful companies from country A who have spent the time, money and effort to develop and market a successful product should be punished because not-so-successful companies from country B complain. While it may be a bit of an exaggeration, when this proposal first came to our attention, we immediately thought, "Wonderful, someone else wants to make Communisim the world standard."

Until all these issues are addressed, the nation of Berkylvania refuses to lend it's support for any such propsal.

When I make the effort to post this on the message boards before I submit it, no one offers any changes. Then when I submit it, you all blame me for not having straigtened it out on the forums first.

OK, I'll critique it.
all I can do under current antitrust laws
It's your country. Change the laws to make it more restrictive. My nation was founded by a consortium of corporations and doesn't have anti-trust laws, and we don't want them either.
banning the product from my country is also not an option
Sure it is. Build your own. Steal their patent ... oops, I forgot - you introduced patent protection, didn't you.
An organization be created under the UN Security Council
There isn't a UN Security Council. Not in NationStates, at least. That pretty much invalidates all of #1 right there. Besides, you can't build UN organizations that actually do anything. Game mechanics violation.
encouraged to lend money to a struggling company, within their own national borders
We can already do that. We don't want to. Why fund start-ups that will compete with our oligarcical directors?
a minimum of 0.05%, and maximum of 2%.
over 5 million USD in the previous year, or 2 million USD by July of the current year
Where do you get these numbers? We're dealing with hundreds of millions of people here, and any grocery store or restaurant can blow those numbers off the map. Not per chain - per store. 5 million is nothing, and 2% interest doesn't even cover inflation. Why should we accept numers like this in a proposal that affects all nations?


To make an unpleasantly long post short, we don't want this because it doesn't fit our economic model. "The United Nations has 35,446 member nations" at this writing. I'll bet at least 17,724 of them would share that sentiment.

One last thought. The nations of Microsoft and DeBeers aren't UN members. What's going to keep them from organizing monopolies outside the UN? What's going to stop them from 'borrowing' our patents? None of these laws apply to them. We can't compete with them on an equal footing.

In short, we're screwed if we pass this.

The Most Serene Republic of Lubria will not have our hands continually tied by the overly regulatory members of the Dominion of Anward.

First you try to muscle into our country's internal affairs with your copyright laws, now you are going to create an international police force to go after successful corporations, and this police force won't even be able to go after the majority of the nation states. You are forcing the ship that is the United Nations to sail with holes in our boat, while the rest of the world sails in ships with intact hulls. You are sabotaging the member states of the United Nations with your pointless regulatory garottes. The Most Serene Republic of Lubria will not allow you to dictate economic terms to us, esspecially ones that will bring an end to our strong economy.

Peter Javanis
Special Envoy
Office of the Lubrian Prime Minister

Police force? The UN would pose sanctions.... not arrests.

Police forces fine as well, do they not? you say sanctuions, we say traffic tickets. You've proposed a police force that can only ticket blue cars, but cannot touch the red ones going 20 miles over the posted speed.

....honestly what are you trying to say? This applies to the companies who have a complete monopoly on the market. Such as the real companies as DeBeers, and Microsoft.

no it does not, the UN cannot make laws applying to non member states. Membership is a choice, not an obligation.

....honestly what are you trying to say? This applies to the companies who have a complete monopoly on the market. Such as the real companies as DeBeers, and Microsoft.
There are NationStates reserved nation names for both Microsoft and DeBeers. They are in fact dead nations, so by definition they are not UN Members.


Stick to NationStates, Anward. This other world you keep referring to is irrelevant.

We're sorry, but what's a "USD"? Our currency is the wilber, and our Finance Minister is unable to provide a current exchange rate between wilbers and USDs, whatever those are.

We also fail to see what threat the former nation of Microsoft presents to our economy. How would a failed nation, of interest only to historians, endanger our economy?

We feel that our existing business regulation law is sufficient to deal with the threat of monopoly both foreign and domestic, and see no need for this legislation.

We also note that the proposed legislation also seeks to create at least one (and possibly more than one) international organization, which our colleagues from Lubria have previously noted is a violation of the procedural rules of this forum. As such, this legislation, if proposed, should be ruled out of order and not allowed to be brought to a vote.

The Lady Protector Kalicia
for the Dominion of Lesser Kermitia

I believe there are penalties for repeatedly breaking proposal rules, are there not? Though I'm rather disappointed that there has been no recognizance by the moderators of the horrible infringements of Anward's vicious current bill...

In addition, your "anti-trust" bill flies in the face of communist ideals! ALL my nation's companies, except those damned black-market basket weavers, are controlled by the government. This would violate your "anti-trust" rules and impose the cutthroat mechanics of capitalism on my loyal people! This is intolerable, to say the least. My nation is willing to live in peace with capitalism, but not, and I repeat NOT, when capitalism attempts to insidiously leech through our borders! Keep your ideals on your side of the fence, Anward!

-Eli Beardsley
Head of the Bureau of Law and Order
The People's Republic of James Beardsley

The Rogue Nation of Greenspoint views this as an issue for individual nations to handle internally, not one which the U.N. should be addressing.

James Moehlman
Asst. Manager ico U.N. Affairs
Greenspoint

[OOC]: I'm not sure previous posters are correct in saying that this proposal should be struck off for suggesting that a new UN organisation be set up.

The guidelines state that no proposal can mandate the creation of a new organisation *where it would affect game mechanics* - that is to say, something that would have to be programmed into the NS system by the mods.

So something like a second voting chamber for the UN would be forbidden - but I'm not sure the rule would apply for a case like the proposal under discussion here. A level of bureaucracy would clearly be needed to administer the proposal and the organisation that Anward suggests would have no in-game effect nor require any action on the part of the mods. Isn't it taken for granted that the UN already has a bureaucratic structure to administer such proposals?

I'd welcome the views of the forum mod on the subject, though.

We believe all transnational megacorporations are associations in restraint of trade and should be abolished. There is no greater threat to freedom, political economic or social, than these voracious monsters.

Certainly this modest harmless proposal should offend few; all it does is promote fair competition.

In our opinion, this should be just the first step. Make little ones out of the big ones!!

"Restraint of trade" is a concept recognized by neither extreme of the economic scale. Capitalists see it as redundant; the restraint of trade is the consumer who decides what to buy. Communism controls all commerce, so there is at the same time a monopoly, and no monopoly, as there is no competition at all. The Peaceful Tribes of Collaboration would do well to remember that the UN contains many members of both extremes.

The Most Serene Republic of Lubria sides, in this issue, with the capitalists, we see the educated individual as the only necessary restraint on trade. We create regulations for the safety of our citizens, not to protect ANY corporation, large or small. Education is the key, not regulation. We would be glad to support a resolution to form an international fund to educate consumers about the facts of economics, and allow them to decide for themselves.

Anti-trust laws are useful only when dealing with a commodity driven economy, and the world at large is fast becoming an information driven economy. One need only create a better idea to topple a corporate giant. Yes, competition lowers prices, but that in turn will create inflation, and so on, and so on. The Most Serene Republic of Lubria prefers not to interfere with the natural progression of our economy by passing, or endorsing, laws that take away our citizen's rights to choose one provider or services over another.

Finnaly, the monster is dependent on being fed. Educate your citizens to stop feeding the monster, you do not kill something simply for following its nature. Corporations are greedy, it is their nature. train the animal, do not destroy it because you fear it.

We believe all transnational megacorporations are associations in restraint of trade and should be abolished. There is no greater threat to freedom, political economic or social, than these voracious monsters.

Certainly this modest harmless proposal should offend few; all it does is promote fair competition.

In our opinion, this should be just the first step. Make little ones out of the big ones!!'

There is no fair competition. Inevitably capitalism results in the common man being trod upon by the soulless businesses. This "modest harmless proposal" will offend any thinking person that is not a spineless moderate in the issue of Communism v. Capitalism.

-Eli Beardsley
Head of the Bureau of Law and Order
The People's Republic of James Beardsley

We believe all transnational megacorporations are associations in restraint of trade and should be abolished. There is no greater threat to freedom, political economic or social, than these voracious monsters.

Certainly this modest harmless proposal should offend few; all it does is promote fair competition.

In our opinion, this should be just the first step. Make little ones out of the big ones!!'

There is no fair competition. Inevitably capitalism results in the common man being trod upon by the soulless businesses. This "modest harmless proposal" will offend any thinking person that is not a spineless moderate in the issue of Communism v. Capitalism.

-Eli Beardsley
Head of the Bureau of Law and Order
The People's Republic of James Beardsley

Not to mention the numerous nations that are in and of themselves megacorporations whose very economy would be destroyed by this proposal.

James Moehlman
Asst. Manager ico U.N. Affairs