Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by snitko | Hacker News Reader

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Monopolies and cartels don't exist for long unless governments subsidize them or otherwise help by regulating the industry (and not allowing new players to disrupt the market). You will hardly find an example of a monopoly which was not supported by the government in one form or another.

In the free market cartels break down very fast, because one member eventually decides to defect or because another powerful player comes to the market and realizes he can make a lot of money by providing customers with a better and cheaper service than the cartel members.

Generally, if most people agree they don't want rulers, there will be no rulers. The only reason why governments keep their power is because the managed to convince people that the alternative is a complete chaos and destruction, while in reality it is only governments who create chaos and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Even the most oppressive government can't go for a long time using just force, it has to lie and convince people. If it can't, it is brought down.

Have you ever heard the term "natural monopoly"? It can form because of network effects, big upfront costs, market entry barriers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

And to that I should respond with an article called "The Myth of Natural Monopoly" http://mises.org/daily/5266

And to that I'll respond by asking how many Amazons there are? If it isn't monopoly it's pretty close.

How about Google? Is there any real competition to ad words? Or google search? Does anybody use Bing without being forced? Duck Duck Go is nice, but it has worse results and will have worse results forever.

How about companies making desktop CPUs? Oligopoly isn't monopoly per se, but it's so close it doesn't matter. Nobody enforced that, it arised by itself.

Guess what - making processors in ever smaller process has huge upfront costs and small costs per unit. But that's just economic myth, right?

First of all, Google's been around for slightly more than a decade. I can totally see it losing its monopoly over time (same for Amazon). Also, are Google and Amazon doing a bad job? Are customers (e.g. those who place ads or buy books) unhappy? If a monopoly delivers I have no problem with it. Furthermore, Google doesn't prevent other players from entering the market, it doesn't lobby the government to regulate search and require all companies to acquire a search licence if they wish to get into this business. This is why you see businesses like DuckDuckGo taking their chance.

What I really insist on is that if a monopoly is doing a bad job and if there is no government to protect it, it will inevitably be challenged. How long did it take for Google to challenge Apple's iPhone? Not long. And they really had a huge advantage and were actually doing a pretty good job.

The only true monopoly is a government because even if you wanted to ever challenge it, you'd lose your money, freedom and possibly life. Governments have no respect for people at all because people are not their customers. They know that people have no choice but to pay.

The fact that monopolist doesn't need to play dirty doesn't mean it's not a monopoly. In fact it's the definition of natural monopoly. Same with the fact that customers are happy.

Yep, monopoly can fall, like everything else. Still the statement "natural monopoly is a myth" is false. Besides - states can fall just like companies. They are just bigger and fall slower than companies, but they eventually all fall.

But people do have a choice, at least in the well run countries. They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy. For example in EU you can always move to another country if you don't like your own. It's why I don't support global government or too close unification of EU. I prefer to have a choice.

Proposing to change states into system of companies is a risky experiment. We know how to organize states so they are quite just. Some people doesn't want to follow that schema because they want power, but we know how to do this if we want to. On the other hand we don't know how to separate power without a state and universal laws. It all sounds nice in theory, but in practice it probably would fail spectacularly. I don't want to be part of anarchism experiment - if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.

BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties :) Makes me feel old.

> They are more like share owners than customers - they can vote on who will be on the board. And they can migrate if they doesn't like some policy.

I never understood this argument. If I don't like every company, I can start my own company and disrupt the market. But if I don't like every state in existence, I cannot start my own country and migrate to it.

It is more like slavery: you can choose your master, but you can never become fully free. Just like russian Yuriy's day( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Day ): once a year russian peasants were granted the right to move to another master. "If you don't like your master, why don't you go to another?".

> if you want to do sth like this please do it on volunteers.

This is the exact problem with governments/states: people are not allowed to live however they like. It is not like anarchy is crazy social order that even anarchists are scared to try. Anarchists are simply not allowed to start their own country/city and live there.

> BTW google started in 1997 IIRC. It's like the old movies that came out decade age = in nineties

BTW, google is not a monopoly in many countries(including USA). It doesn't even have a majority market share in every country(e.g. Russia, China)

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