5 ms·
How the hell are Walmart and Target, stark competitors in the same space, both monopolies?
by pitaj 4y ago
How the hell are Walmart and Target, stark competitors in the same space, both monopolies?
- jszymborski 4y agoAn oligopoly, then? A cartel?
- bombcar 4y agoThese anti-monopoly laws always end up as “make restrictions preventing new competitors at some cost the big companies can easily handle”.
- Teever 4y agoAlways? All anti-monopoly laws, ever?
- diegoholiveira 4y agoThat’s a hypothesis explored by some authors, like here: https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/big-business-rise-american-statism-roots-regulation https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/big-busin...
- Teever 4y agoLibertarian is a word for people who are too bashful to describe themselves as Feudalists.
- pessimizer 4y agoYes, that's why the biggest companies are constantly lobbying to pass antitrust legislation. Because of the extensive history of small upstart competitors being destroyed in antitrust cases.
- BurningFrog 4y agoAt least there are only two. Imagine how awful if we had 5 or 10 monopolies in the same market!
- dathinab 4y agoPeople are to focused on the mono-part. IMHO appropriate laws should be applied to any company which directly or indirectly affects some "high" threshold of people. Or another way to think about it would be if it's practically impossible to enter a market even with a decent start capital because of it being dominated by a small number of mega cooperation it's not (much) different then a monopoly. What does it matter if there are 1 or 5 companies which effectively undermine competition in a harmful way. It's either way harmful.
- AmericanChopper 4y agoHaving 5 companies that actually compete for business wouldn’t harm consumers. Having 5 companies that avoid competition would, and that’s called a cartel and it’s already illegal according to the anti-trust laws (the Sherman and Clayton Acts).
- J3klin 4y agoOligopoly is only marginally better than monopoly.
- dathinab 4y agoA cartel is illegal yes, but proving a cartel is dam hard. And depending on jurisdiction requires proving that the companies actually had some "agreement"/"communication" wrt. their non-competing (as far as I remember). But if you look at markets all around the world having situations with the same harmful dynamics as cartels but for legalities not counting as cartels is not uncommon.
- judge2020 4y agoMonopolies might be harmful in that sense, but the issue is that monopolies tend to happen naturally as a company grows and expands into a national corporation, which is the most textbook definition of capitalism and the american dream. In general antitrust laws are meant to 'allow' competitors to exist should a new competitor attempt to challenge the incumbents, but they're not an attempt at forcing competition by hurting those incumbents.
- dralley 4y agoThere are huge swathes of the country, rural areas primarily, where Walmart is the only local option.