Can you provide a few examples of the ample historical evidence for that "inevitable result"? I'm looking for one or two cases where a private monopolist entered a competitive market, managed to shut down competitors with predatory pricing, and then raised prices afterwards to higher levels than when they entered the market.
This is one of those claims that sounds plausible, but I've yet to encounter a historical case of it actually occurring.
Re:Amazon's Whole Foods deal under scrutiny
by didgeoridoo on Monday July 24, 2017 @10:44PM
(#14844698)
That's because it hasn't happened. It is simply a highly-plausible fantasy used to justify government interventions in fully-functioning markets. Economist Thomas DiLorenzo has actually studied this, and has found that, in the vast majority of cases, monopolies are associated with a dramatic (edit: permanent) reduction in prices. He found only two cases that actually followed the "predatory pricing" script (edit: that is, where prices dropped over time and then rose when monopoly power was achieved) — and those were trivial monopolies in the markets for matches and castor oil in the early 20th century.
(Edit: remove FTC comment, as it is besides the point and not strictly accurate)
Re:Amazon's Whole Foods deal under scrutiny
by electricEmu on Monday July 24, 2017 @09:41PM
(#14844399)
Microsoft and Internet Explorer is pretty close. Browsers sold for money. Microsoft entered the browser market and undercut it. Through market dominance they owned the market requiring anyone that wanted to access some parts of he web intact on Windows.
Re:Amazon's Whole Foods deal under scrutiny
by sokoloff on Monday July 24, 2017 @10:07PM
(#14844522)
As a consumer now, is the problem that I have to save up my money and carefully choose which expensive web browser to "buy"?
At most, that's evidence of a new dynamic coming to a market, but I don't see the evidence of consumer harm from the phase 2 raising of prices in the browser market.
- Whole Foods no longer needs to be profitable because it's a subsidy of Amazon
- Whole Foods will thus drive down prices
Hold on, why? Because driving down prices will drive out competition. There's ample historical evidence for the inevitable result of this, which is
- Whole Foods leverages its new monopoly after murdering all competition by raising prices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing