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This isn't an area I've ever looked into, so you could well be right that the negatives outweigh the benefits. My gut instinct is to disagree with you, i.e. you

by corin_ 12y ago

This isn't an area I've ever looked into, so you could well be right that the negatives outweigh the benefits. My gut instinct is to disagree with you, i.e. you'd have to show me the evidence to change my mind (don't get me wrong - I could equally gather it myself if I cared enough, and I'm not actually asking you to try to change my mind). I'm defending them on the basis that the theory is good. For example the theory of cops having fully automatic weapons is good (they stop criminals, the more armed they are the more they can do that), but you're absolutely right about cost/benefits, and I'd always support less-armed police over more-armed police. My point was that you can argue the negatives outweigh the benefits, but "you can choose not to use them" in the context of a monopolies debate isn't relevant.

nickik 12y ago
Well, Hacker News comments are not a format for this. I cant get all the sources in a short amount of time and doing this for one person in a tech forum is not really worth my time. Also if I just gave you things to read, you will have a bias starting point, I would only provide things that I think are good. So I can only advice that you start from blank and dive into it, see were your research leads you. I can only tell you my story. I had the same opinion as you do now, and because I became intrested in economics I started reading a lot about it and these tech monopoly cases pushed my attention towards these antitrust laws and my research change my mind. And its not even the case that these laws were put in place with good intention and then they were abused, but the other way around they were put in place to be abused. > My point was that you can argue the negatives outweigh the benefits, but "you can choose not to use them" in the context of a monopolies debate isn't relevant. The question really is, what is a monopoly. Its suprisingly hard to answer. Is the defintion that there are no real alternatives? Or that they have a market share of X%. Is a company that has a techniclly unique product a monoply because nobody else can produce it. If you think about it, everything is a monoply, nobody else can produce the exact thing you do. So there is a question about granularity of monopoly definition. Some might say 'over one market' but that is very vage as well. Take the car as a example, does it only compete with other cars of simular size or does it also compet with airplanes and trains? Does a car sometimes play in the same market as skype, because if I can work remotely I dont need a car. In economics, price theory is used, when a company can push the price over some equillibrum price its a monopoly but that of course cant really be used in the case of google or the internet explorer case. Also "you can choose not to use them" is relevant, because thats the last competition even the biggest monoply provider faces. For everything that is not a live or death question you have the option to not use it. Befor some pruduct/service X was invented you could live without X and now a monopoly provides X, you are not forced to buy X now, you can just go on with your live unchanged. This is very relevant in the economic analysis of markets and monopolys. Im not saying monopolys are not sometimes a problem, im just saying that the issue is far more complicated then it seams.

by corin_ 12y ago

nickik 12y ago

Well, Hacker News comments are not a format for this. I cant get all the sources in a short amount of time and doing this for one person in a tech forum is not really worth my time. Also if I just gave you things to read, you will have a bias starting point, I would only provide things that I think are good. So I can only advice that you start from blank and dive into it, see were your research leads you. I can only tell you my story. I had the same opinion as you do now, and because I became intrested in economics I started reading a lot about it and these tech monopoly cases pushed my attention towards these antitrust laws and my research change my mind. And its not even the case that these laws were put in place with good intention and then they were abused, but the other way around they were put in place to be abused. > My point was that you can argue the negatives outweigh the benefits, but "you can choose not to use them" in the context of a monopolies debate isn't relevant. The question really is, what is a monopoly. Its suprisingly hard to answer. Is the defintion that there are no real alternatives? Or that they have a market share of X%. Is a company that has a techniclly unique product a monoply because nobody else can produce it. If you think about it, everything is a monoply, nobody else can produce the exact thing you do. So there is a question about granularity of monopoly definition. Some might say 'over one market' but that is very vage as well. Take the car as a example, does it only compete with other cars of simular size or does it also compet with airplanes and trains? Does a car sometimes play in the same market as skype, because if I can work remotely I dont need a car. In economics, price theory is used, when a company can push the price over some equillibrum price its a monopoly but that of course cant really be used in the case of google or the internet explorer case. Also "you can choose not to use them" is relevant, because thats the last competition even the biggest monoply provider faces. For everything that is not a live or death question you have the option to not use it. Befor some pruduct/service X was invented you could live without X and now a monopoly provides X, you are not forced to buy X now, you can just go on with your live unchanged. This is very relevant in the economic analysis of markets and monopolys. Im not saying monopolys are not sometimes a problem, im just saying that the issue is far more complicated then it seams.