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subtitled; As Kevin Drum says, they prefer monopolies like the ones Visa and MasterCard enjoy That's not a monopoly.
by nhebb 16y ago
subtitled; As Kevin Drum says, they prefer monopolies like the ones Visa and MasterCard enjoy
That's not a monopoly.
- ladyada 16y agoits not technically, but it is practically. i wouldn't say they -collude- but their discount rates (what merchants pay) have been going up. there are also new, completely arbitrary fees (yay NABU). and there is no incentive for prices to go down because the purchaser (the merchant) is separate from the consumer (the customer). V/MC rates could eventually inch up to 4 or 5% and there's pretty much nothing anybody can do about it except pass the costs to the customer.
- kgrin 16y agoAt one point in the article he makes the correction that it's technically a "duopoly" - but certainly not a free market.
- notauser 16y agoIt is a free market (a free market is a market without economic intervention and regulation by government) it just isn't a perfect market (perfect competition occurs in markets in which no participant has market power).