Quote: (10-07-2016 03:29 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:
highly educated population. Where's the European Google, Amazon, Apple, Intel, Microsoft, SpaceX, etc?
Note the type of all these companies: tech. America is itself so overbearing that the only industry it's managed to excel in is it's least regulated one -- and not deliberately, but simply because it's harder to regulate.
Quote: (10-07-2016 03:29 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:
However on the other hand, a completely laissez faire approach while desirable, can lead to problems with monopolization. Eventually the largest companies will concentrate capital to the point where they become monopolies that in themselves act in protective (and unscrupulous) manner, in similarity to an overbearing state. They can create barriers of entry, they can buy out competitors and shut them down (thus stifle innovation), and price discriminate.
This is where the state, or preferably the courts can keep these companies from overgrowing and becoming a problem down the line.
All the monopoly stuff is overblown, and the origin of the anti-monopoly stuff is the same groups who justify everything else the government does. It's just another false intellectual cover for equally bad behaviour.
Definitely read up about Rockefeller. He's the quintessential example of a monopolist, as he was unapologetic and no-holds-barred in his attempts to make oil monopolies. See just how bad for the consumer (i.e. the majority) it ultimately was.
Basically it isn't an issue. Purely private monopolies simply aren't that strong. It faces pressure to cheat from inside, and constant new-entrant pressure from outside. Rockefeller was having to constantly buy new refiners as they entered the market. This lead to people building refineries just to sell to him; repeat. The only reason Rockefeller could afford to keep doing that was that refineries under his control were so efficient and profitable.
People battling to create, hold, and break monopolies is as much a part of the free market as anything else, and is no problem whatsoever. The entrenchment it creates is very shallow, and can lend stability to markets, as it did under Rockefeller by restraining the producer's price race-to-the-bottom -> go bankrupt -> prices rise -> repeat cycle.
The problem is when the government gets involved. A monopoly
backed by a gun is a whole different situation.
That is a very deep entrenchment. It changes mere breaks of trust or refusals to cooperate or submit into a criminal act. The
only monopoly danger is a government-backed one. And once the interventionist government is there, it becomes a race by private companies to lobby the law in their direction.
It's a terrible, dysfunctional, and destructive system, that should be abolished.