Hacker News Reader

Comment by Hellbanevil | Hacker News Reader

When a company can loose money on a competiting company just to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a monopoly.

No not monopolies like we had like the Bell telephone, but we have 2-3 huge companies that collude and stifle competition.

Proving collusion is hard these days though. Too many fresh faced MBA's who are atheists.

(I'm a Watch Repairer. I can't buy parts from The Swatch Group, or Reichmont. Why do we even have The Sherman Anti-trust Act if it's never used? I'm not saying dissolve these obvious conglomerations, but let's not encourage them. Why was ATT and T-Mobile allowed to combine. To tired to go on, but tired of ogliopolyssssss.

View on HN

> When a company can loose money on a competiting company just to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a monopoly.

You can't just redefine what words mean if you want to be taken seriously.

Especially when what you described is a legitimate and very common business tactic [1]

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lossleader.asp

When it's done to force competitors out of a market it's called predatory pricing [1], and it is not a legitimate business tactic. It is illegal in many jurisdictions, and generally considered unethical even where it's not specifically outlawed. It is also considered a strategy to achieve a monopoly or near-monopoly pricing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing

You should read the link you posted.

That only applies when one of the competitors is effectively a monopoly anyway.

That's incorrect, and accusing people of not having read something is against the site guidelines.

Predatory pricing just needs to be done from a dominant market position, which is absolutely a label that applies to the giant tech firms being discussed. You only need to be in a market position strong enough to wield the pressure needed to force competitors out of market. You absolutely do not need to be effectively a monopoly.

> Proving collusion is hard these days though. Too many fresh faced MBA's who are atheists.

What does a person's religious beliefs have to do with hiding collusion? That's a helluva straw man to pull into the conversation, and it completely derails your first point.

I was nodding during your first paragraph, then did a double take to make sure I read the second right.

> Why was ATT and T-Mobile allowed to combine.

AT&T and T-Mobile did not combine, that purchase was (one of the few mergers) blocked by the DOJ under the Obama administration.

T-Mobile did later (2020) buy Sprint, but it was in a far worse position economically than T-Mobile was in 2011 at the time of the attempted AT&T purchase.

> When a company can loose money on a competiting company just to drive the competing company out of business; I call that a monopoly.

But this may happen even on a highly competitive market, if one company is a large established one (say, controlling 10% of the market), and the other is a small startup. Just make the key differentiating feature which the new competitor is bringing free in your established product for some time. Implement it first, if needed.

It happens all the time in the laundromat business - if you try to open one near an existing one you better be ready to withstand months or years of “25 cent loads” and other such fun things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com