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Comment by sseveran | Hacker News Reader

The ability for a business to use the government to its own ends its directly proportional to the size and power of the government. One of the best examples I can think of is Gazprom. While technically a private company its really just an extension of Vladimir Putin's government. In the US you find the similar arrangements in the defense and intelligence sectors.

The less powerful the government, the less power there is to be had by co-opting it.

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But you are in that assuming that private enterprise wouldn't be able to establish a monopoly via the market, a monopoly that wasn't necessarily established via "fair game".

The less powerful ANY organization the less power. It's not exclusive to governments.

Natural monopolies are near impossible, and have never harmed anyone. I've only heard of 2 in all of U.S. history. I don't remember which they were, but they didn't last long and they were entirely insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Natural monopolies are indeed possible and they are indeed of course harming people. DeBeers being just one example of that.

DeBeers only has a 40% market share, bad publicity is a major driver for them. At their highest they only had 90% share, that means there were other choices. >.>

Not a monopoly. No real harm either. If you want to complain about where the money went after the transactions were made, that's another subject.

You're so set on arguing with me. I think it's best if you sat down.

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