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Your historical knowledge is ok. But it wasn't a monopoly. At its peak it had 90% market-share. It was never "illegal" or "impossible" to sell petroleum in com

by _red 13y ago

Your historical knowledge is ok. But it wasn't a monopoly. At its peak it had 90% market-share. It was never "illegal" or "impossible" to sell petroleum in competition to it -- just highly very difficult to compete with them. In the same vein, google has 9-1 share of the internet search market....should we call it a "monopoly"?

jbooth 13y ago
Totally different. Google has mindshare and a seemingly-insurmountable lead, but they do not have a monopoly on internet search results. I could put up the worlds crappiest search engine next weekend and theoretically be 'competing' with them. Spider a few million websites and link to them in some order and you're in the same business. Standard Oil, at its peak, had an actual near-monopoly on most discovered sources of oil. You can't even get into the oil business unless you discover more oil -- in theory, they could have used their resources to stay on top of each oil source as it was discovered. No amount of old-fashioned ingenuity can compete with that.
mabhatter 13y ago
I get so sick of this. Monopoly economics is based on statistics of a random buyer wanting to buy stuff from a random seller. With NO INTERFERENCE. Statistitions consider 25% chance to be "unlikely", and 75% chance to be "very likely". So a 90% chance of doing business with ONE company is as Statistically close to 100% that it might as well BE 100% for economic purposes. Once a company hits 75% or so they have no "economic need" to write restrictive exclusive contracts as they basically control the market. Remember, the RULES OF FREE MARKETS assume there are ALWAYS enough buyers and sellers that NEITHER side has a group large enough to independently affect the market prices. As soon as a buyer or seller hits about 25% they aren't following the rules of the "Free Market system" they are Capitalists attempting to REMOVE the RIGHTS of the Free Market system from others using aggregation of capital resources.

by _red 13y ago

jbooth 13y ago

Totally different. Google has mindshare and a seemingly-insurmountable lead, but they do not have a monopoly on internet search results. I could put up the worlds crappiest search engine next weekend and theoretically be 'competing' with them. Spider a few million websites and link to them in some order and you're in the same business. Standard Oil, at its peak, had an actual near-monopoly on most discovered sources of oil. You can't even get into the oil business unless you discover more oil -- in theory, they could have used their resources to stay on top of each oil source as it was discovered. No amount of old-fashioned ingenuity can compete with that.

mabhatter 13y ago

I get so sick of this. Monopoly economics is based on statistics of a random buyer wanting to buy stuff from a random seller. With NO INTERFERENCE. Statistitions consider 25% chance to be "unlikely", and 75% chance to be "very likely". So a 90% chance of doing business with ONE company is as Statistically close to 100% that it might as well BE 100% for economic purposes. Once a company hits 75% or so they have no "economic need" to write restrictive exclusive contracts as they basically control the market. Remember, the RULES OF FREE MARKETS assume there are ALWAYS enough buyers and sellers that NEITHER side has a group large enough to independently affect the market prices. As soon as a buyer or seller hits about 25% they aren't following the rules of the "Free Market system" they are Capitalists attempting to REMOVE the RIGHTS of the Free Market system from others using aggregation of capital resources.