Comment on X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws
Empricorn@feddit.nl 2 months agoMonopolies depend on the government to exist.
I won’t bother with the rest, but this is flat-out false. Unregulated capitalism is responsible for unethical practices such as buying out your competitors, price-fixing, waiting-out your competitors (because they can’t match your unrealistically low price), insider-trading, exploiting a captive audience, and only competing in “territories” (you know, like drug dealers).
I can’t speak globally, but all the worst monopolies engaged in at least one of these. The US is far from perfect, but they squashed several giant monopolies because of practices like this. Corporations without guardrails are unrestrained greed.
jdeath@lemm.ee 2 months ago
a monopoly patent was literally a government invention. an actual monopoly does require the government. what you are talking about is called a “natural monopoly” in the literature. that would be a situation where there’s only one seller for something like say water in a desert town. in that case you can have price gouging and such.
now, the important bit is the LEGAL ability to prevent competition. if there is a natural monopoly on water, and the seller decided to start charging obscene amounts for water, those extreme profits would normally induce other sellers to enter the market. **except when they are legally prohibited **, we can expect that a natural monopoly will not last if what we call “monopoly rents” are extracted.
so you see, a true monopoly requires legal force, eg the state.
Laurentide@pawb.social 2 months ago
They’re not talking about natural monopolies. A natural monopoly is when there’s some barrier to entry that prevents competitors from entering the market, like a need for prohibitively expensive infrastructure.
What OP is talking about are situations like Walmart opening a store in a new location, operating it at or near a loss to drive the local competition out of business, and then jacking up prices once no competitors remain. The government isn’t forcing them to do that.