"Because if you are going to be a monopolist and fat finger the economies, it is always best to be a monopolist with guns."

Not best, because it always will be some other monopolist with bigger guns or better political connections or better pull and so on. Therefore the name of the game will be might, not mind. The competition will be not on quality of the products and services, not even on the price, but on the size of the cake's slice which government redistributes. The outcome of such a situation is vividly depicted in "Atlas Shrugged". If you prefer reality to the fiction, then observe that total USA debt is already equal to its total GDP. This is the end of the road.

As Rearden in AS explained:

"Mouch :All we have to do is just equalize the sacrifice-than everybody will recover and prosper

Rearden :You’ve been equalizing sacrifice for over a hundred, no, for thousand of years. Don’t you see that you’re at the end of the road?

Lawson: That’s just theory!

Rearden:I know your practice. It’s your theory I’m trying to understand. Have you anything left to loot? What will you do after you finish me? What do you see ahead-except plain, stark, animal starvation? What can save you now?"

If some believe that the answer is Barak Obama, then they deserve their future.

....I always though his surname would be pronounced the same way as mooch as in moocher. Now I feel silly.

You see, it isn't a monopoly when businesses without preferential access to the monopolists with guns compete with businesses with access to the monopolists with guns.

That is called free-enterprise by some. Especially when the businesses without preferential access to the monopolists with guns are taxed to pay for the guns aimed at them.

Unlike GE.

Why are GSEs "SEC Exempt?"

Because if you are going to be a monopolist and fat finger the economies, it is always best to be a monopolist with guns.

"none of that, however, prohibits others from competing with the politically favored business,"

Yes, sure, rule by pull. The system which is most compatible with the useless parasites, who able only to fight over the piece of cake which they cannot bake. No wonder you advocate it. State is coercion. How free business can compete with force? But there is no chance that looters in spirit ever would understand the difference between might and mind.

Rand was an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, big or small. What Luskin calls " Big Business" is not capitalism at all, it's State coercive monopoly.

Not necessarily monopoly. Bailing out a business from bankruptcy, or giving it a low-interest loan because of political pull, might be an example of intervention into the economy by the state; none of that, however, prohibits others from competing with the politically favored business, so there's no issue of "monopoly" here. I know it's hard for you, but try to use words with some precision.

Luskin does.

Anyway, it's clear you don't understand Rand, Objectivism, capitalism, or the previous post by Luskin.

"The author of "Atlas Shrugged" was an individualist, not a conservative, and she knew big business was as much a threat to capitalism as government bureaucrats."

This statement is wrong on both accounts and only shows how little people understand about Rand and Objectivism.

Rand was an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, big or small. What Luskin calls " Big Business" is not capitalism at all, it's State coercive monopoly.

"Rand was not a conservative or a liberal: She was an individualist"

No, she was an Objectivist.