4 ms·
Reminds me of the people who say that regulations strangles innovation, and is the reason why $HUGE_COMPANIES dominate, we must remove the regulations and promo
by throwaway2048 7y ago
Reminds me of the people who say that regulations strangles innovation, and is the reason why $HUGE_COMPANIES dominate, we must remove the regulations and promote a free market where quality goes up and prices come down, except the second part rarely seems to end up happening, but not before the controls that helped mitigate the abuse of the large players get removed.
- Animats 7y agoOK, so let's take free markets seriously. The EU has a study which I cited in a previous posting indicating that price competition requires four substantial sellers. One is a monopoly, two tend to implicitly cooperate as a duopoly, sometimes there's competition with three but often two of those dominate as a duopoly, but with four, price competition usually appears. It takes at least four players to have a free market. So, less than four players in a market, and Government constraints kick in. Breakups, blocks on mergers, restrictions on expansion, higher taxes and closer scrutiny for the top 3. The US used to do stuff like that. The EU now does. Now that's a free market.