Comment on X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws
jdeath@lemm.ee 2 weeks agoa 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 weeks 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.