
Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition - fmihaila
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-myth-of-capitalism-monopolies-and.html
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vertline3
Trust-busting was a thing in the past, Teddy Roosevelt was known as the trust-
buster, and ran against Taft with the Bull Moose party, splitting the R vote.
Taft actually was more prolific with trust-busting than Teddy, it may be his
biggest presidential legacy.

Gary Kasparov pointed this Taft fact out as well, so people are thinking about
the need to break up monops.

I sort of worry with a global system, you break up a local monopoly, will a
foreign monopoly take over the vacuum?

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geezerjay
> I sort of worry with a global system, you break up a local monopoly, will a
> foreign monopoly take over the vacuum?

I share your concern, but I perceive it slightly differently: state-sponsored
corporations of very uncapitalist regimes such as China are free to throw
their weight around to derail and manipulate capitalist economies to their
favour. How can a free and democratic nation ensure that their capitalist
system can function if a super-power is dedicated to sabotage it to help
further their agenda?

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gizmo686
Limit free trade. This isn't even restricted uncapitalist uncountrys [0]. With
absolute free trade, you end up undermining the laws of every juristiction
unless you have some authority who can set common rules.

This is great when we are undermining laws of nature, much more case dependent
when we are undermining explicit policy decisions.

[0] And frankly, what country is entirely capitalistic in all of its
industries.

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anth_anm
> Firstly - and somewhat controversially - the authors assert that low levels
> of competition lead to low levels of innovation (and hence lower levels of
> economic growth). This is controversial because Silicon Valley produces
> companies with very little competition (Google for example) that are clearly
> innovative

and they have eaten alive older companies that forgot how to innovate.

> Tepper and Hearn have written an angry book. It is angry at the regulators
> that have allowed non-competitive mergers to happen. It is angry at
> politicians and lobbyists in the pocket of supernormally profitable
> corporations.

What's wrong with an angry book? Those examples are things worth getting angry
about.

> They endorse measures against tech companies that stop them leveraging
> monopolies on one sector into monopolies in another sector. They would have
> endorsed the break-up of Microsoft into an operating system company and an
> applications company.

Wouldn't have been the end of the world. Imagine if MS had split. Parts of it
would have failed. But office on Linux would probably be a thing.

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scott-smith_us
I don't agree with this writer's take on the AA incident.

Any airline has a right to ask you to exit their plane, just like a taxi
driver can ask you to leave his taxi. They owe you a refund, and maybe
compensation, but they don't OWE you transportation.

If you were getting into a taxi, and the driver (for some reason) determined
that s/he couldn't take you to your destination, they have every right to ask
you to exit the vehicle.

Other than some kind of life-threatening emergency, there is no scenario I can
imagine where you could be in the right by refusing to exit the vehicle and
insisting they take you anyway. If you did refuse, force-able removal is the
logical next step.

Writer went on to suggest that racism was somehow involved, which is where I
gave up on reading the article.

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thefounder
You miss the point. To make your analogy right imagine there is must be single
taxi company operating in your area and it decides not to take your order
anymore because they don't make much profit from your trip. You need to wait
several hours until their queue clears out and then you have to pray not to be
outbid by someone else.

Of course the company decides what orders to take but you have to ask yourself
why your government allows this kind of monopolies. After all capitalism
promised to fix the worst flaws of commusims(i.e lack of competition/choices).

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testrun
'After all capitalism promised ..'.

Nope, capitalism does not promise anything. It is not a political system as
the same as communism.

 _Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means
of production and their operation for profit._
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

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woodandsteel
The promoters of capitalism do most definitely promise that. And what is your
position on the issue?

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geezerjay
> The promoters of capitalism do most definitely promise that.

No, they don't. That's just a poorly made up strawman.

At best what capitalism proponents defend is that it provides a system where
products and services are provides efficiently to the public due to a
combination of free enterprise, private ownership of the means of production,
and competition.

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woodandsteel
And a large part of their argument is that this all works vastly better than
socialism.

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nailer
> Health insurance is consolidated to the point where in most states there is
> only one or two realistic choices

This. I'd love to see more work on smashing monopolies in the health industry
than I would on working out ways to fund them.

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jsaldes
The synthesis of the indigo color wiped out an entire monopoly. Before the
German chemist Adolf von Baeyer the market relied heavily upon the import of
natural indigo from India whom basically got wiped off the market in one
season. In yet another David vs. Goliath display of how the balancing of the
market works in action a monopoly fell. Simultaneously a new market got born;
namely the blue (indigo) jeans market. If you ever doubt that the market can
handle the advent of monopolies - look no further than the pants you’re
wearing!

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nickthemagicman
We used to say that monopolies were wrong and bad for capitalism.

Now we're saying that monopolies are ok?

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jsaldes
Well, Adam Smith certainly thought they were bad and he is probably most
correct about that as well. But they aren't the end of the free market as some
people want to have you believe!

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vkaku
IMO, Laizzes-Faire capitalism is the sort that, as of today, favors the larger
players over the smaller fish in the sea.

Practically, that system is going to become worse than ever.

