In a similar discussion yesterday (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24697860) many seem to pass easily over the basic fact that monopolies are wrong, whatever your political/economic leaning is. I commented:
In economic theory, a well-functioning market is a market where no single actor can manipulate prices all by itself. That's why monopolies (oligopolies - monopsonies) are fundamentally bad.
In some situations where a monopoly makes sense (there is no sense in having 2 autonomous rail systems for instance), typically for infrastructures, there are strong provisions to be applied to keep the monopoly in control. Historically, these monopolies were often simply managed by a publicly-owned company (USPS, or interstate highways, for instance).
As I said in another comment, there is no rational way to defend or explain away monopolies. If you're a free-market capitalist, then you want a functioning free market, thus no monopolies. If you're a socialist, you want them publicly-owned and democratically controlled.
Large powerful monopolies are a tremendous menace to democracy, simple as that. It's not a question of their CEOs being nice people or not, it's deeply ingrained in the logic of being a monopoly.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 10.5 ms ] threadIn economic theory, a well-functioning market is a market where no single actor can manipulate prices all by itself. That's why monopolies (oligopolies - monopsonies) are fundamentally bad.
In some situations where a monopoly makes sense (there is no sense in having 2 autonomous rail systems for instance), typically for infrastructures, there are strong provisions to be applied to keep the monopoly in control. Historically, these monopolies were often simply managed by a publicly-owned company (USPS, or interstate highways, for instance).
As I said in another comment, there is no rational way to defend or explain away monopolies. If you're a free-market capitalist, then you want a functioning free market, thus no monopolies. If you're a socialist, you want them publicly-owned and democratically controlled.
Large powerful monopolies are a tremendous menace to democracy, simple as that. It's not a question of their CEOs being nice people or not, it's deeply ingrained in the logic of being a monopoly.