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Free market can destroy itself, for instance by the creation of a monopoly. How to apply the mechanism of the free market, as good as it can be, if it disappear

• icebraining 12y ago
  Free market can destroy itself, for instance by the creation of a monopoly. Can it? Are there any good examples of a market with a significant size (with enough profits to support multiple suppliers) devolving into a monopoly without any "help" from outside the market?
  • gambiting 12y ago
    US and Comcast situation? The market is huge(pretty much everyone needs Internet), the profits are huge as well, yet in a lot of places Comcast has dominated the market.
    • aianus 12y ago
      That's a government granted monopoly, not a natural one.
    • icebraining 12y ago
      Comcast hasn't dominated the market through market forces, it bought it from AT&T in 2001. Comcast has now ~21M customers - AT&T Broadcast, which they bought, had 22M. AT&T, has one should know, was a legal monopoly; hardly a free market participant.
      • rhino369 12y ago
        Acquisition is a free market tool.
        • deleted 12y ago
          [deleted]
        • icebraining 12y ago
          But the acquisition didn't create the monopoly; that was created by a company with legal privileges. I never claimed that markets automatically dissolved monopolies created by State policy. What I asked is if there are examples of free markets turning into monopolies.
          • cygx 12y ago
            > But the acquisition didn't create the monopoly; that was created by a company with legal privileges. But this is exactly what is happening here: Uber tries to get the legal privilege of being exempt from German regulations. > What I asked is if there are examples of free markets turning into monopolies. Cartelisation, anyone?
            • icebraining 12y ago
              But this is exactly what is happening here: Uber tries to get the legal privilege of being exempt from German regulations. I don't see how; how are they preventing others from doing the same? I'm not saying what they're doing is okay, but there's no privilege, anyone else (including incumbents) can decide to ignore the law and provide taxi services without the proper licenses. Cartelization Well, the you can surely provide an example of a cartel which has achieved monopoly without any help from States, just as the result of market failure.
              • cygx 12y ago
                I don't see how; how are they preventing others from doing the same? There's a saying in Germany - Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter (sort of a legal principle: Non ultra petita). Uber only could get away with breaking the law because no one complained. Someone now did. Case closed. Well, the you can surely provide an example of a cartel which has achieved monopoly without any help from States, just as the result of market failure. You really need references for that? It should be obvious. There are markets that lend themselves to big business. As soon as a few big players have cornered the market, it is in their best interest to play nice with each other so that 'everybody' wins (at the cost of their customers, of course). This creates a de-facto monopoly that might or might not be viable long-term (backstabbing probably will happen someday). Historically, there's been a lot of that going on. The most recent case I remember were some German sugar manufacturers, but I could probably come up with hundreds of cases; it would be a waste of my time, though.