5 ms·

I hate the whole idea of anti-trust. Charge more than your competition and your abusing your monopoly. Charge less than them and your pricing to destroy compe

I hate the whole idea of anti-trust. Charge more than your competition and your abusing your monopoly. Charge less than them and your pricing to destroy competition and monopolise the market. Charge the same as your competition and your colluding on price. Anti-trust laws simply penalise big, successful companies for the fact that they're successful.

eru 17y ago
I am tempted to agree. Perhaps the resources allocated to anti-trust measures can be spend more productively on lowering barriers to market entry.
- markessien 17y ago
  That's silly. Imagine a country with a single oil producing company. However, this oil companies decides that it will sell oil at 3-4 times the standard price. There is no competition, so people have to buy at that price, making this oil company a huge profit. According to your plan, these resources (several billions of dollars) should be invested by the government to create a viable competitor. But the other oil company will battle this every step of the way - it can poach all the quality people who work at the other company, it will sign exclusive deals with tanker companies and so on. Oversight is not an option, it's a necessity. Companies should know that ethical competition is not just the right thing to do, it's also the law.
  - randallsquared 17y ago
    I don't think "create a viable competitor" automatically follows from "lower barriers to entry". Some ways to lower barriers to entry might be to eliminate tariffs, taxes, and regulations, or to implement a minimum guaranteed income. Of course, lowering only some tariffs, taxes, and regulations might well raise barriers to entry in some markets, as might an MGI. Interference in the marketplace never has only one effect.
    - eru 17y ago
      Yes, in the example, lowering tariffs on foreign oil might be the best course of action. Explicitely funding a competitor sounds somewhat silly.
dfranke 17y ago
"Now let me state the present rules," The lawyer then went on, "These very simple guidelines, You can rely upon: You're gouging on your prices if You charge more than the rest. But it's unfair competition if You think you can charge less! "A second point that we would make To help avoid confusion... Don't try to charge the same amount, That would be Collusion! You must compete. But not too much, For if you do you see, Then the market would be yours - And that's Monopoly!" --"The Incredible Bread Machine"
- erlanger 17y ago
  Is this a poem? Or will it compile?
  - dfranke 17y ago
    I needed to use code formatting to get it to honor the line breaks.
    - erlanger 17y ago
      Makes sense, my underlying question being if this whitespace is significant.
      - jibiki 17y ago
        I wouldn't have even noticed that it rhymes without the whitespace.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  Found a link to the full epic: http://www.vex.net/~smarry/oldbbs/bread.html http://www.vex.net/~smarry/oldbbs/bread.html
anigbrowl 17y ago
Well, anti-trust cases do depend on evidence of collusion between market participants, rather than pricing information alone. As Adam Smith said, men of the same profession seldom come together save with the intent to defraud the public.
- tjic 17y ago
  > Well, anti-trust cases do depend on evidence of collusion between market participants And the Taliban only execute gays where there is evidence of homosexuality. Sorry, the "evidence" bit by itself doesn't make me think that the law is justified.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Isn't your argument just a slippy slope toward anarcho-capitalism? The workings of the legal system are too complex and error-prone for us to regulate things? It takes a long time to litigate environmental cases too. Should Dow be allowed to dump carcinogens into our rivers?
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      Preferring that a law be justified is anarcho-capitalistic? Huh.
      - tptacek 17y ago
        The question wasn't whether the law could be justified; the question was whether the government, as the arguer conceived of it, was competent to enforce the law. The same argument could be applied to many other complex technical subjects which we clearly do need to regulate. Also: anarcho-capitalism, silly? Of course it is. Slippery slopes usually lead somewhere silly.
        Semiapies 17y ago
        Your response here seems like you've confused at least one other thread with this one.
edw519 17y ago
"Anti-trust laws simply penalise big, successful companies for the fact that they're successful." Simply? Hmmm... let's think about that... Rockefeller wouldn't ship his oil on anyone's railroads except Vanderbilt's. Vanderbilt wouldn't ship anyone's oil except Rockefeller's. They did this until they were the only 2 left. That is until we the people said, "Enough of this." If we treated each other fairly, we wouldn't need rules. If we followed the rules, we wouldn't need laws. If we obeyed the laws, we wouldn't need courts. So many of us hate rules, laws, or lawyers, but still refuse to behave in such a way as to make them unnecessary.
- kiba 17y ago
  Actually his oil empire is an immense boon to the consumers. He made oil cheap. He did tries to run out his competition but he never could completely eliminate them. At one time, Standard Oil only fleeting hold 91% and 85% of final sale. So there were still competitors at the hieght of his empire. However, by the time the federal government decided to use antitrust charges on Standard Oil, its share of the market dropped tremedously. In any case, the government is itself responsible for creating legal monopolies such as patents and copyright. It was also supposed to break up supposed monopolies, which may or may not be true. With such conflict of interest and the law of unintended consequence in mind, I am very skeptical about such antitrust claims. Don't take my word for it though. Do your own research.
  - tc 17y ago
    So far it appears that you and I are swimming against a wave of populism on HN. Oh well, this too shall pass...
- tc 17y ago
  They did this until they were the only 2 left. The Standard Oil case you reference is widely misunderstood. Standard Oil's market share was dropping for a decade before the anti-trust case. And at the time of the case, 1911, there were some competitors you might recognize, such as Texaco, Shell, and Gulf already established in the market. And at any rate, do you really believe that society would be better off if these so-called private monopolies (I'm going to exclude the monopolies created by government force here, such as cable franchises, telephone companies for most of history, patents, etc.), such as Google, Standard Oil, or Alcoa, had simply closed their doors? "You're right, we're a monopoly. The world would be better without us. Effective next week, we're all going home to tend to our gardens and take up piano lessons." See also: http://mises.org/story/2694 http://mises.org/story/2694
markessien 17y ago
Imagine you own a small cigar shop on a street. Then a large supermarket chain moves in beside you. However, everyone still buys their cigars from you because you are selling good quality cigars. So the big shop decides to declare cigars a loss leader, and sells them at a loss. You lose all your customers, and go out of business. The big store then sells cigars at standard price, and people now buy because there is no competition. Big companies have the resources to compete unfairly against small companies. Oversight is needed in case they are actually abusing their monopoly power.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  Small firms, however, can use loans and investment to hang on longer, and the longer they hang on, the more likely that the big company will give up. Even when they do go out of business, if the big company raises prices too much, there will be an obvious market opportunity and someone will start up a cigar shop, and then the big company has to sell at a loss for another 6 months, 2 years, or whatever, and then the cycle can repeat. There's almost always going to be someone willing to bet that the big company will give up this time, and that very fact makes them more likely to actually give up, once they understand it. Of course, in the real world, what they'll do is quietly fund an anti-tobacco zoning ordinance (which they're grandfathered in for, of course), or use some other trick that amounts to keeping out competitors at government-point, because that's what big companies do, if they can. Actual competition isn't nearly as harmful as lobbying.
tptacek 17y ago
Who are you arguing with that says Google should be taken to court for charging too much or too little? Microsoft required their OEMs to install and highlight Internet Explorer, their free replacement for a ~$30 startup product, and was then shown in court to have built a deep, complex strategy for exploiting their OS and licensing agreements to undermine their competition. Even then, they might not have lost had they shown more respect for the courts.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "Microsoft required their OEMs to install and highlight Internet Explorer, their free replacement for a ~$30 startup product, ..." Weren't Web browsers at that time free, expect for Navigator? (And then only for commercial usage, I think.) I used Mosaic, Cello, Navigator, and IE, and never paid for a browser, and don't recall every being expected to. The idea that an O/S vendor shouldn't bundle some piece of commodity software because someone else decides they want to make a business selling it as an add-on is foolish.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    This is a strange argument, because Netscape was the market leader, and made hundreds of millions of dollars from their browser... until Microsoft (not Cello, not NCSA Mosaic) deliberately killed the product by cloning it, putting the price tag at zero, coupling it to their operating system, and inking deals with all their OEMs requiring it to be showcased. The price was the least of the issues here, but even if that wasn't the case, your argument doesn't work.

eru 17y ago

I am tempted to agree. Perhaps the resources allocated to anti-trust measures can be spend more productively on lowering barriers to market entry.

markessien 17y ago
That's silly. Imagine a country with a single oil producing company. However, this oil companies decides that it will sell oil at 3-4 times the standard price. There is no competition, so people have to buy at that price, making this oil company a huge profit. According to your plan, these resources (several billions of dollars) should be invested by the government to create a viable competitor. But the other oil company will battle this every step of the way - it can poach all the quality people who work at the other company, it will sign exclusive deals with tanker companies and so on. Oversight is not an option, it's a necessity. Companies should know that ethical competition is not just the right thing to do, it's also the law.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  I don't think "create a viable competitor" automatically follows from "lower barriers to entry". Some ways to lower barriers to entry might be to eliminate tariffs, taxes, and regulations, or to implement a minimum guaranteed income. Of course, lowering only some tariffs, taxes, and regulations might well raise barriers to entry in some markets, as might an MGI. Interference in the marketplace never has only one effect.
  - eru 17y ago
    Yes, in the example, lowering tariffs on foreign oil might be the best course of action. Explicitely funding a competitor sounds somewhat silly.

dfranke 17y ago

"Now let me state the present rules," The lawyer then went on, "These very simple guidelines, You can rely upon: You're gouging on your prices if You charge more than the rest. But it's unfair competition if You think you can charge less! "A second point that we would make To help avoid confusion... Don't try to charge the same amount, That would be Collusion! You must compete. But not too much, For if you do you see, Then the market would be yours - And that's Monopoly!" --"The Incredible Bread Machine"

erlanger 17y ago
Is this a poem? Or will it compile?
- dfranke 17y ago
  I needed to use code formatting to get it to honor the line breaks.
  - erlanger 17y ago
    Makes sense, my underlying question being if this whitespace is significant.
    - jibiki 17y ago
      I wouldn't have even noticed that it rhymes without the whitespace.
CWuestefeld 17y ago
Found a link to the full epic: http://www.vex.net/~smarry/oldbbs/bread.html http://www.vex.net/~smarry/oldbbs/bread.html

anigbrowl 17y ago

Well, anti-trust cases do depend on evidence of collusion between market participants, rather than pricing information alone. As Adam Smith said, men of the same profession seldom come together save with the intent to defraud the public.

tjic 17y ago
> Well, anti-trust cases do depend on evidence of collusion between market participants And the Taliban only execute gays where there is evidence of homosexuality. Sorry, the "evidence" bit by itself doesn't make me think that the law is justified.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Isn't your argument just a slippy slope toward anarcho-capitalism? The workings of the legal system are too complex and error-prone for us to regulate things? It takes a long time to litigate environmental cases too. Should Dow be allowed to dump carcinogens into our rivers?
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    Preferring that a law be justified is anarcho-capitalistic? Huh.
    - tptacek 17y ago
      The question wasn't whether the law could be justified; the question was whether the government, as the arguer conceived of it, was competent to enforce the law. The same argument could be applied to many other complex technical subjects which we clearly do need to regulate. Also: anarcho-capitalism, silly? Of course it is. Slippery slopes usually lead somewhere silly.
      - Semiapies 17y ago
        Your response here seems like you've confused at least one other thread with this one.

edw519 17y ago

"Anti-trust laws simply penalise big, successful companies for the fact that they're successful." Simply? Hmmm... let's think about that... Rockefeller wouldn't ship his oil on anyone's railroads except Vanderbilt's. Vanderbilt wouldn't ship anyone's oil except Rockefeller's. They did this until they were the only 2 left. That is until we the people said, "Enough of this." If we treated each other fairly, we wouldn't need rules. If we followed the rules, we wouldn't need laws. If we obeyed the laws, we wouldn't need courts. So many of us hate rules, laws, or lawyers, but still refuse to behave in such a way as to make them unnecessary.

kiba 17y ago
Actually his oil empire is an immense boon to the consumers. He made oil cheap. He did tries to run out his competition but he never could completely eliminate them. At one time, Standard Oil only fleeting hold 91% and 85% of final sale. So there were still competitors at the hieght of his empire. However, by the time the federal government decided to use antitrust charges on Standard Oil, its share of the market dropped tremedously. In any case, the government is itself responsible for creating legal monopolies such as patents and copyright. It was also supposed to break up supposed monopolies, which may or may not be true. With such conflict of interest and the law of unintended consequence in mind, I am very skeptical about such antitrust claims. Don't take my word for it though. Do your own research.
- tc 17y ago
  So far it appears that you and I are swimming against a wave of populism on HN. Oh well, this too shall pass...
tc 17y ago
They did this until they were the only 2 left. The Standard Oil case you reference is widely misunderstood. Standard Oil's market share was dropping for a decade before the anti-trust case. And at the time of the case, 1911, there were some competitors you might recognize, such as Texaco, Shell, and Gulf already established in the market. And at any rate, do you really believe that society would be better off if these so-called private monopolies (I'm going to exclude the monopolies created by government force here, such as cable franchises, telephone companies for most of history, patents, etc.), such as Google, Standard Oil, or Alcoa, had simply closed their doors? "You're right, we're a monopoly. The world would be better without us. Effective next week, we're all going home to tend to our gardens and take up piano lessons." See also: http://mises.org/story/2694 http://mises.org/story/2694

markessien 17y ago

Imagine you own a small cigar shop on a street. Then a large supermarket chain moves in beside you. However, everyone still buys their cigars from you because you are selling good quality cigars. So the big shop decides to declare cigars a loss leader, and sells them at a loss. You lose all your customers, and go out of business. The big store then sells cigars at standard price, and people now buy because there is no competition. Big companies have the resources to compete unfairly against small companies. Oversight is needed in case they are actually abusing their monopoly power.

randallsquared 17y ago
Small firms, however, can use loans and investment to hang on longer, and the longer they hang on, the more likely that the big company will give up. Even when they do go out of business, if the big company raises prices too much, there will be an obvious market opportunity and someone will start up a cigar shop, and then the big company has to sell at a loss for another 6 months, 2 years, or whatever, and then the cycle can repeat. There's almost always going to be someone willing to bet that the big company will give up this time, and that very fact makes them more likely to actually give up, once they understand it. Of course, in the real world, what they'll do is quietly fund an anti-tobacco zoning ordinance (which they're grandfathered in for, of course), or use some other trick that amounts to keeping out competitors at government-point, because that's what big companies do, if they can. Actual competition isn't nearly as harmful as lobbying.

tptacek 17y ago

Who are you arguing with that says Google should be taken to court for charging too much or too little? Microsoft required their OEMs to install and highlight Internet Explorer, their free replacement for a ~$30 startup product, and was then shown in court to have built a deep, complex strategy for exploiting their OS and licensing agreements to undermine their competition. Even then, they might not have lost had they shown more respect for the courts.

jamesbritt 17y ago
"Microsoft required their OEMs to install and highlight Internet Explorer, their free replacement for a ~$30 startup product, ..." Weren't Web browsers at that time free, expect for Navigator? (And then only for commercial usage, I think.) I used Mosaic, Cello, Navigator, and IE, and never paid for a browser, and don't recall every being expected to. The idea that an O/S vendor shouldn't bundle some piece of commodity software because someone else decides they want to make a business selling it as an add-on is foolish.
- tptacek 17y ago
  This is a strange argument, because Netscape was the market leader, and made hundreds of millions of dollars from their browser... until Microsoft (not Cello, not NCSA Mosaic) deliberately killed the product by cloning it, putting the price tag at zero, coupling it to their operating system, and inking deals with all their OEMs requiring it to be showcased. The price was the least of the issues here, but even if that wasn't the case, your argument doesn't work.