| The Ghost of RubangB said: I stopped having arguments with free market people after one (a roommate) told me that anti-trust laws got in the free market's way, and a true free market would have a magical invisible hand come destroy the monopoly with a new small innovative company that can do it cheaper and/or better, instead of the monopoly buying it, stealing it, or crushing it. The only invisible hand I know is the one that fists the poor and gives handjobs to the rich. A pure free market is as wacky a fantasy as pure communism. That's why the U.S. is socialist as all hell and wiggles around in the middle. (runs from thread) |
Monopolies are not (necessarily) a bad thing being that there are certain markets (for example power generation) where the efficiency of scale means that one large company can produce a far better product at a far lower price. Now, if a monopoly takes advantage of their position and sells a product at a price higher than a smaller company can produce and sell the same product for while making a profit a smaller company will enter the market and provide competition.
Now, the problem is that a (bad) Monopoly may not dissolve in a timely manner and the inefficient state the market is in may persist for quite awhile; consider Windows, even though competition has arrived in the form of Linux and Mac it is taking a very long time for them to (slowly) chip away Window's marketshare.
Realistically, I don't think eliminating anti-trust laws is a good thing but I also don't believe that Monopolies pose the risk most people assume they do.
