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> In general the libertarian position is that problems like this would be solved by competition if there weren't government regulations stifling competition. An

> In general the libertarian position is that problems like this would be solved by competition if there weren't government regulations stifling competition. And they're often right I disagree. There are many situations in which it will always be more profitable to screw over consumers than it would be to not screw them over, even taking into account that you might steal some business from competitors. Any company that does spring up out of nowhere and do the right thing for the consumer will eventually be forced to screw over their customers or be bought up by someone who will because shareholders will never leave giant piles of money sitting on the table. Even if a company somehow managed to put every one of their competitors out of business, shareholders will still demand endless growth so the only thing left is to screw the customers and degrade the product which is exactly what we see over and over again once a company has anything close to a monopoly.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Even if a company somehow managed to put every one of their competitors out of business, shareholders will still demand endless growth so the only thing left is to screw the customers and degrade the product which is exactly what we see over and over again once a company has anything close to a monopoly. But this is exactly the point. A competitive market is going to have at least a dozen suppliers. There are some corporate apologists who like to pretend that a duopoly is competition and only a strict monopoly is a problem, but that's BS. With sufficiently few suppliers they can easily collude with each other or use conscious parallelism to make sure that everybody is screwing customers and therefore nobody has to stop. A competitive market isn't a thing where one company is so great they put all of their competitors out of business. It's a thing where entering the market is easy so lots of people do it all the time. Suppose there is a market with five companies all colluding to screw the customer. If entering the market is easy then soon there are six companies, because investors like money. If the incumbents are getting 50% margins and you could go eat their lunch while still getting 20% margins, that's what you do. Then there are six companies getting 20% margins, but that's still a good profit margin and it's still easy to enter the market, so soon there are seven and their margins are 8%. Trying to buy out the new guys or collude with them doesn't work because the combination of "industry with high margins" and "easy to enter the market" means new companies will keep showing up forever until the margins come down. Whereas if there is a market with five companies all colluding to screw the customer and regulations make it hard for anyone new to enter the market, the customer is screwed. Which is what keeps happening.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> Even if a company somehow managed to put every one of their competitors out of business, shareholders will still demand endless growth so the only thing left is to screw the customers and degrade the product which is exactly what we see over and over again once a company has anything close to a monopoly. But this is exactly the point. A competitive market is going to have at least a dozen suppliers. There are some corporate apologists who like to pretend that a duopoly is competition and only a strict monopoly is a problem, but that's BS. With sufficiently few suppliers they can easily collude with each other or use conscious parallelism to make sure that everybody is screwing customers and therefore nobody has to stop. A competitive market isn't a thing where one company is so great they put all of their competitors out of business. It's a thing where entering the market is easy so lots of people do it all the time. Suppose there is a market with five companies all colluding to screw the customer. If entering the market is easy then soon there are six companies, because investors like money. If the incumbents are getting 50% margins and you could go eat their lunch while still getting 20% margins, that's what you do. Then there are six companies getting 20% margins, but that's still a good profit margin and it's still easy to enter the market, so soon there are seven and their margins are 8%. Trying to buy out the new guys or collude with them doesn't work because the combination of "industry with high margins" and "easy to enter the market" means new companies will keep showing up forever until the margins come down. Whereas if there is a market with five companies all colluding to screw the customer and regulations make it hard for anyone new to enter the market, the customer is screwed. Which is what keeps happening.