There is one part you may want to reconsider, however.

"Some government intervention is necessary because people will abuse freedom to take advantage of others… monopolies will form in a completely open financial system, and monopolies are known to be destructive to freedom".

I challenge that assertion. Prior to the statist policies implemented during the railroad era (and after), I am not aware of large monopolies in America — likewise, I am not aware of anti-monopoly laws being instituted prior to that time either.

In America we have been taught heavily that corporations tend to create monopolies and that monopolies are bad. But I wonder if that isn't a hold-over doctrine passed down from mixed-statist governments who have run our country to varying degrees for over 100 years.

I observe that there are 2 types of monopolies: non-consentual monopolies and consentual monopolies.

By non-consentual monopolies I mean where a company or group of companies collaborate on a valuable product and successfully shut-out all competition — phone companies are a good example of this where, in earlier eras, only one phone company was allowed by law to establish and own phone poles and lines and no competitors were allowed into the market.

But take note, that sort of monopoly was only created by artifice of government edict. Without governmental law mandating that only one company could build and own and access the phone lines, no such monopoly would have been possible.

By consentual monopoly I mean where one or more companies collaborate on a product in an attempt to make it the most popular and widely-used product of it's kind. There is nothing preventing smaller companies from attempting to introduce their product into the market, even if the business practices of the larger company dominate so strongly that they own the lion's share of the market. A good example of this would be Microsoft's Windows O/S where even though they heavily influence and dominate the market, smaller O/S's do in fact exist and customers do in fact have a choice — in fact, Linux is a good example of a competitor still managing to succeed in spite of the larger force.

The reason I say that it is a 'consentual' monopoly is because such monopoly really does only exist due to the consent of the consumer. If 50% of Windows users utterly refused to use Windows and switched to Linux, the software market would be flipped on it's head overnight and Linux would become the big boy.

The difference between the two types of monopolies is whether or not the statist government is allowed to intervene. If allowed to intervene, we always tend to get the non-consentual form of monopoly — one where our power to choose is completely taken away from us and we are forced to choose the only choice that is provided to us by the politicians voted in by the majority. On the other hand, if we refuse the statist government from intervening, the consentual form of monopoly will occur — one where, individually, we all retain the power to choose and can change our minds at any minute and choose the other product. I'm not saying it might not be inconvenient, but an inconvenient choice is far better than no choice at all.

Ayn Rand, my favorite philosopher, carefully elaborates on this very subject in her writings. It is her account of how the big railroads created the first major monopoly in America, and how they were allowed to do so by statist-government policy, that opened my eyes to the matter.

When the gov't attempts to create anti-monopoly regulation, they are in fact growing statism.

As conservatives of freedom, I don't think we should look kindly on gov't trying to regulate monopolistic business practices — the government are themselves responsible for the worst and most corrupt form of monopoly.

That I were to choose between Ma Bell or Microsoft, give me Microsoft any day of the week! At least then I could still vote with my dollar.