3 ms·

"Why yes, sir, we'd like to be 3 separate monopolies please."

• fennecfoxen 11y ago
  While it's not certain, it's only forecast to be "17 percent of global pesticide sales and about 40 percent of America’s corn-seed and soybean markets." Since the economics-textbook definition of the power of a monopoly is that they have power over prices, it's not entirely clear how monopolistic they will be in practice. Roundup Ready corn is nice (well, for farmers anyway) but if they raised the price too high farmers could always just switch to regular corn. And there exist alternatives to materials like Teflon and Kevlar as well.
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Roundup Ready corn is nice (well, for farmers anyway) but if they raised the price too high farmers could always just switch to regular corn. Or, you know, if DowPont tried that with something Roundup Ready (of which, IIRC, only first-generation Roundup Ready soy is off-patent), they would lose business to Monsanto, who will not only still be the dominant seed company after the DowPont merger, but is also the creator and, for crops like corn where the initial Roundup Ready variety is not off-patent, patent-holder for Roundup Ready traits.
  • fweespeech 11y ago
    Given we complain about the oligopoly price setting powers of various groups which have less than 40% of the American market in a given industry... Yeah. You are being a bit too literal.