Comment by ergothus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ergothus | Hacker News Reader

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> try to imagine a world with no patent or copyright laws

I'm not a big fan of the laws as we have them, but sure, i'll play along:

> How would Lockheed Martin, GE, Disney, etc. look?

...I'm not sure they'd look substantially different. LM would still only be in competition with a few others because of high barriers to entry. GE...I lack even passing knowledge to speculate. Disney would lose out on a lot of merchandizing money, but once someone in a field like animation or entertainment got ahead, they'd have an easier time attracting both customer AND talent, which provide a feedback loop to their benefit.

> how would Comcast look?

...of my many, MANY complaints about Comcast, I don't know that copyright or patent issues show up. Comcast isn't what they are via govt monopoly (so far as I know, though they have of course abused govt power) but because the cost of entry is so high that there are few competitors. Even when there ARE competitors, they choose not to compete (see recent admission that comcast and time-warner don't even compete pre-merger).

> Look into the concept of regulatory capture

Not qualified to even speculate - let's just say I have some skepticism but don't reject your claims.

All in all, it seems like you are arguing that the govt creates monopolies. I won't argue against that. BUT my claim is that you have MORE monopolies in (certain) unregulated markets. I can very well be wrong...do you have any evidence to that point?

>>BUT my claim is that you have MORE monopolies in (certain) unregulated markets. I can very well be wrong...do you have any evidence to that point?<<

Not to be too cheeky, but do you have any evidence to support your claim that we would have more monopolies without government intervention?

If you look back through U.S. history, how many monopolies has the government actually broken up? Not many. And I don't think anyone can seriously argue that the threat of antitrust action by the government is what has limited the existence of monopolies.

On the flip side, the government has created or protected thousands of monopolies. As the parent mentioned, virtually every city in the U.S. has granted monopolies to local service providers. On a grander scale, U.S. policy has long perpetuated monopolies for the likes of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel by imposing tariffs on foreign goods and raising barriers to entry through licensing and other regulatory hurdles.

It seems self evident to me that for at least the last 200 years U.S. governments in total have done far more to foster monopolies than they have to dismantle them.

> Not to be too cheeky, but do you have any evidence to support your claim that we would have more monopolies without government intervention?

I just posted elsewhere in these comments on that, but basically: Hearst, US Steel, Microsoft, plus lots of potential abuse that is prevented. (You're implying that tariffs supported the US Steel monopoly - I won't argue. But it didn't create the monopoly, and it didn't create the market abuse)

> And I don't think anyone can seriously argue that the threat of antitrust action by the government is what has limited the existence of monopolies.

I certainly will. I've watched Microsoft dance about (including funding Apple) when they were scared. Before them IBM did the dance. BSD exists because AT&T was prevented from selling UNIX directly. I see Google doing the dance, and Amazon is in the wings. Syngenta was going to merge with Monsanto, but didn't, and not because they suddenly thought it was a bad deal. Bayer and Monsanto are now looking to merge, and they are figuring out what businesses to spin off to avoid being stopped by monopoly concerns. You can go through the big mergers over the past 20 years (at least) and see how they've worked to avoid being hit with govt restrictions.

The govt even allows you to be a monopoly, all through your own market prowess...but prevents (or tries to) you from using that monopoly to spread into related areas. Absent that oversight completely free market capitalism would have ground innovation to a halt because the barriers to entry in most industries would be crippling. Investors wouldn't want to invest in competitors because it'd be a terrible risk rather than a basic risk.

> It seems self evident to me

Indeed, it is self evident to you. Not to everyone.

How could MSFT have gained its monopoly position if anyone were allowed to distribute Windows without paying MSFT a cent? How about if they couldn't enforce patents on the industry at all? There couldn't be a more clear case of government being required for a monopoly to form than any intellectual property company.

I'm not quite as familiar with US Steel, but I do know that one of the primary reasons they became so big was because they were fully integrated through the entire production process. A substantial part of that was controlling the mode of transportation for heavy goods, railroad. That history of rail in our country is wrought with examples of government granted monopolies right from the beginning of the trans-continental railroad.

I know virtually nothing about Hearst, but it was a news/media company right? So that should definitely fall under the same category of intellectual property.

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