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Comment by peacetreefrog | Hacker News Reader

Her two examples, the medical and agriculture sectors, are two of the most regulated industries around.

A lot of these "monopolies" result because of regulation pushed by combination of well-meaning and self interested people and corporations (see bootleggers and baptists).

Her examples suggest it'd be better to focus on the marriage between corporations and government, which allows companies to focus their energy on getting gov to hassle their competitors vs improving their own product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists

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I don't know why you are getting downvoted because you're absolutely right. The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces.

Monopolies are not all bad. Sometimes a company has a monopoly because they just offer a better product (Amazon, Google) and they shouldn't be punished for that, especially when there's no government intervention that exists to protect them.

Yeah, and it's debatable whether -- in these cases -- the monopolies would exist if it weren't for this regulation. The health care market is extremely distorted, and that's definitely true in the case of agriculture:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/business/richer-farmers-bi...

Amazon is a infested with scam storefronts. And Amazon is really compelled to do anything about it because they have no competition.

Airlines have huge market barriers: getting and maintaining huge, expensive, gas guzzling aircraft. That is not a regulation barrier.

Both telecomm and health care are intwined monopsonies backing the play of regional monopolies (cartels) backing federal congresspeople.

I just don't buy any of your comment as fact at all.

Airlines have new entrants all the time. Sure it's costly to start a new airline, but not by the standards of available capital. But there are also lots of regulatory barriers, available landing slots and terminals for example. For some reasons we think it necessary to have government run airports.

Amazon has to compete with other online retailers and local retailers. How many scams it allows is a measure of it's competence, not it's market power. If I get scammed on Amazon they are getting a charge-back and will have to deal with my credit card company.

>Amazon is a infested with scam storefronts.

Evidence?

"The first three markets named (airlines, telecommunications, health care) are all heavily regulated and the barrier to entries are controlled by the government, not natural market forces."

Not true. It costs a lot of money to purchase a commercial aircraft, and not because of regulation. It also costs a lot of money to start up an ISP, and not just because of regulation.

> "regulations are supported both by groups that want the ostensible purpose of the regulation, and by groups that profit from undermining that purpose." Wikipedia

Yes, we should stop the people that want to undermine the purpose of regulations. Regulations are critical to assure the safety of our medicines and of what we eat. But we need to pay more attention to the abuses, and to separate the well-needed regulations from the abuses pushed by interested parties. But that is true for all the government work, we should stop the interference of a small powerful few so we can get what society, as a whole, needs.

In many cases the most qualified people to say what should be regulated and how work for the companies that would be affected by the regulation.

Regulation isn't a binary thing. And it's probably better to speak of government intervention than regulation, as the former is more general. We need to cut the interventions that effectively serve as protectionism for powerful interests and reinforce those that provide for a fair market and protect the social good.

Obviously, those things are subjective, but I would welcome a political discourse that centered on how we slice those concerns.

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