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I don't know about other countries, but in America, being a monopoly is not at all outlawed. The criminality associable to monopoly here is when a monopoly abu

I don't know about other countries, but in America, being a monopoly is not at all outlawed. The criminality associable to monopoly here is when a monopoly abuses their monopoly power. If I am the only company in America that produces widget x, I have a de facto monopoly, but I am not guilty of anything until and unless I attempt to exert my monopolistic influence to prevent competitors from taking my market share. If I am a pure monopoly, then it's possible that just running a loss-leading sale could result in antitrust violations, but if I am not a monopoly, or if I am a minority provider of widget x, then loss-leading sales are a presumptively lawful activity. Edit: I believe closeparen makes this point more precisely with his post in this same topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14528355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14528355

quadrangle 9y ago
> If I am the only company in America that produces widget x, I have a de facto monopoly That's not what monopoly really means. Peter Thiel (for whom I have lots of criticism) makes these things really clear in the way he discusses them. You could open up a British Food restaurant somewhere and be the only one in town. That doesn't make you a monopoly because the actual market is for all types of dining. There's not specific British Food market that you've captured. When businesses want to taut their power and monopoly status (whether to delude themselves or to get investors or whatever), they will pretend that the market is as narrow as their particular product. When they want to convince regulators that they are just one in a competing market, they'll widen the market as much as possible…