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What would you consider an example of a monopoly being broken by the market rather than government intervention?
by stevenwoo 9y ago
What would you consider an example of a monopoly being broken by the market rather than government intervention?
- CryptoPunk 9y agoAndroid breaking Windows' monopoly on operating systems. It did so largely by eclipsing the desktop computer by facilitating the creation of a new mode of personal computing. One could argue that TCP/IP and web standards like HTTP and HTML similarly made the desktop and its associated software (operating system, productivity suites, etc) less relevant, by increasing the ability of desktop users to access computing resources served by machines running different operating systems (e.g. a Linux server).
- croon 9y agoSo what you're saying is that you can't break a monopoly through market forces, but merely wait out the monopoly market's relevance?
- CryptoPunk 9y agoYou can make the monopoly less relevant or irrelevant by superseding its market. Maybe saying that's a case of "breaking the monopoly" is a stretch, but the point is it's a valid solution to the problems of a monopoly, which emanate from the market and financial power its controller wields.
- petre 9y agoPoliticians are already in the pockets of monopolies, that's why. Look at Microsoft: their monopoly on the desktop was broken by the rise of mobile, so clearly by market forces. Monopolies just get replaced by other monopolies.