ATT quickly became a monopoly. If it could enforce who installed what on its network, it would be nearly impossible to compete with it.

Standard Oil is the same; if it could control the entire distribution system, there is no reasonable way to compete with it.

The end result is that consumers get crappier products at a far slower rate.

No one is forcing you to buy these products. And if they send a salesman out who puts a gun to your head, you can call the police.

It sounds remarkably like we need to be protected from Terrible Secret of Space (http://www.newg...rtal/view/33440).

I like “I’ll be interviewing” followed by “It will definitely be a lively debate”. It made me imagine something less euphemistic. A old fashioned “interviewing” ought to be highly entertaining. Go, Mike, Go!

It’s interesting that in any debate (religion, economics, you name it…) there are always fanatics, who will believe nothing else than their own narrow radical view point, and the rest of us (the vast majority) who believe you need some balance between the extremes.

Anti-trust is as necessary, an unregulated marketplace will result in abuse and lawlessness, just like any society lacking law enforcement would. There also needs to be limits to how these regulations are applied, checks and balances, but without the rule of law and the opportunity of justice for all you cannot have a free society.

The idea that really successful one-company dominated industries are bad is short-sighted and is actually anti-competitive.
In the longer run, if a monopoly (that’s not government backed) doesn’t innovate and provide at a mutually agreed upon price, they won’t survive. Look at the auto industry, 20 years ago, who would have thought there would be so many auto start-ups making electric cars that out-innovate the oligopoly. If you go way back, during the Era of Standard Oil, we had the most innovative progress in that industry than ever before.

* The free market is supposed to be the most efficient way to allocate resources – monopolies = no free market.

** Try working for a large company.

*** Didn’t see an update to IE6 until Firefox started to enroach on Microsoft’s 99% market share, did we?

Oh boo hoo hoo, poor Microsoft. Monopolies aren’t being ‘enslaved’ when they are prosecuted under anti-trust legislation; where there’s monopolies, you don’t really have capitalism in that marketplace, but a kind of private socialism. Anti-trust regulation helps the free market, rather than hinders it.

Companies strive to avoid the markets they operate in becoming too free (perfect market = no supernormal profits), and will try to eliminate their competitors where they can. It makes sense for them to do so, but it doesn’t help their customers when they have to deal with a monopoly that can charge what they like for shoddy products. Hence government regulation is needed to protect the free market and the benefits it brings.

Objective law requires that folk “know clearly, and in advance of taking an action, what the law forbids them to do (and why), what constitutes a crime and what penalty they will incur if they commit it.”

Anti-trust is a non-objective law, which is highlighted in the following article:

Drop the Antitrust Case Against Microsoft

From the link on Objective law shown above, philosopher & writer Ayn Rand put forward the following arguments:

1) The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures. Men who attempt to prosecute crimes, without such rules, are a lynch mob. If a society left the retaliatory use of force in the hands of individual citizens, it would degenerate into mob rule, lynch law and an endless series of bloody private feuds or vendettas.

A government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of physical force under objective control-i.e., under objectively defined laws.

2)When men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat’s whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown “influence” will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive, if they remain in the industry at all-and compromise, conformity, staleness, dullness, the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road are all that can be expected of them. Independent thinking does not submit to bureaucratic edicts, originality does not follow “public policies,” integrity does not petition for a license, heroism is not fostered by fear, creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun.

Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.

On point 2), Ayn Rand is right on the mark about the use of non-objective law such as the anti-trust. Anti-trust is there a misguided belief that it is to protect consumers, that is the rights to the properties of the producers are being taken off them and given to the consumers enforce by the state thus enslaving the rightful owners of the properties/goods/services.

Anyone who believes that anti-trust is just, is a person who cannot apply reason in an objective manner.

1) Barriers of entry are low.
2) There is a reasonably competitive industry.

#1 is how telecommunication monopolies can pop up. Unless you get vastly new technology, there is no way you can set up your new infrastructure.
#2: Network effects and two-sided markets can kill this.

Imagine everyone had iPhones tied to ATT. How could I break this? All the app developers are writing for the large market, and the only telecommunications service available won’t let me use them. For the former, I could perhaps emulate the iphone, but that would break plenty of patent laws (granted that this is part of the government monopoly).

I’m also interested in knowing what he thinks about these issues and developments, here’s hoping that Tech Crunch will remember to report it for us, and include transcripts + video.

In a truly free market, with natural low barriers of entry, “bad” monopolies rarely exist for very long. New competition either forces the harmful practices to change naturally, or market share shrinks and eventually the monopoly status disappears.

Its a shame more people than not now see big successful companies as “bad” by default and necessitate govt intervention to fix. Like in so many other areas of our society now, freedom is no longer given a fair chance.