Quote:
Originally Posted by TakuanSoho
There has never been a predatory monopoly in a free market, all predatory monopolies have had government support. So in a genuine free market you would not need the restrictions, all that would be required is the rule of law.
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Yay! Right on.
It is a wonderful thing to make a good product and to get rich by it. But...
There is a damn good reason why the rich, colonist founders of the USA got rid of the wealthy, monopolistic British. They did not want the monopolists to use their amazingly vast wealth to bribe politicians and rule the country as a merchant aristocracy.
A monopoly does not simply monopolize a single market, so that there would be thousands of little monopolies out there, each making a different product. Through "vertical integration," monopolies attempt to suck up every business in the cycle (suppliers & distributors), while through "horizontal integration" they obtain as many marketing-related businesses ("synergy") and competitors as they can—and they would certainly buy & sell us workers & consumers too, if they weren't prevented from doing so by that pesky Constitution of ours.
When a business has tens of billions, or even hundreds of billions in cash, they can also forestall the "creative destruction" of their business by crushing competition until they have pinched every last penny/erg/unit out of it and position themselves to control the next wave (so that the innovators/engineers end up as their "employees" instead of as independent entrepreneurs). Thus, though there is "progress," it is crippled and not nearly as rapid as it could be, while benefiting fewer people.
ALL monoplies tend toward sloppier products because no matter how badly they do, they always see a growing bottom line, and have no gauge (competitors) to see how well it can be done. And, if people can somehow manage to go without their product (and all the substitute products that the monopoly owns too), the monopoly will simply raise the price for those still buying their product (or what they believe are substitutes, but are really made by a division of the monopoly—or with supplies from that monopoly).
I simply cannot find any reason to favor monopolism unless one owns a monopoly and thinks it will be the monopoly that will someday own all the other monopolies...
I would like to see how people in this country would react if right on the face of all their products was the corporate label of the company that owned the company that owned the company...
Seriously, I believe they would think they woke up into a
Twilight Zone episode!