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Comment by galadriel | Hacker News Reader

I would be inclined to consider MS Windows had monopoly on market of desktop OS, and that particular market had little government oversight, essentially a free market. And Microsoft did what any rational monopolist would do, use it's monopoly power to stop spread of any other OS (by deals with OEM,etc), tried to enter other markets by use of monopoly, etc etc. Standard oil comes to my mind as another monopoly, but the market of petroleum was essentially not that free.

Now you may argue that the OS market was not technically free (as none has been in history of mankind), but I don't see any reason that why a better product would not gain monopoly in free market, and then, barring any restriction, why would the monopolist not (ab)use its power to maintain monopoly.

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I don't see how Standard Oil was a monopoly, it only ever had at most 60% of the market. And even then, oil prices fell substantially during its reign so what's the problem?

Windows for all its market share, has still coexisted with Mac OS for decades. During that time computers have become more affordable, more prevalent, and more useful and having a dominant single platform seems to have been beneficial to many industries. So again, I don't see what the big problem is.

The only monopoly that seems genuine to me is (/was) DeBeers diamonds, although the fact they have no control over the sale of second hand diamonds makes me question its authenticity.

Can't we admit that monopolies are basically a myth? Why do people keep bringing them up as if there's numerous examples of monopoly abuse or monopoly-induced misery.

>> Can't we admit that monopolies are basically a myth? Why do people keep bringing them up as if there's numerous examples of monopoly abuse or monopoly-induced misery.

Exactly. The only monopolies that have ever existed in history are ones given monopoly privilege by government force.

Monopolies do exist, especially in developing countries. And they tend to control prices when no competition is around. The only reason why monopolies are no longer as dominant in the United States and the West is because of the outlawing of monopolistic practices like hoarding or selling products below costs to kill off smaller competitors. Again I don't deny that government involvement sustains monopolies but monopolies are first created by the free market, and then they kill that very free market that brought them to the top. I think we should do away with campaign contributions and go straight with public financing.

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