> Business on the other side, tend to be punished by the markets when misbehaving and then course-correct.

That only happens when there are regulations to run afoul of and/or a company is not a monopoly. Without government companies would be free to pollute the environment, cheat customers, and abuse workers to breaking point. The market wouldn't punish those companies if all the companies in the market were doing the same kinds of things, which is what would happen if said bad behavior was profitable.

"Oh you don't disagree with Exxon poisoning community water supplies and using a private army to seize land from indigenous people? Tough luck, Shell and BP are doing the same thing."

Yeah most governments leave a lot to desire in efficiency, fairness, effectiveness, etc. But a world where corporations are the only ones who set the rules would be far worse.

No, if a corporation behaves poorly then I can buy from a different corporation.

It has nothing to do with regulations.

You’re not the Equifax customer. Equifax arguably behaved poorly with its security breaches that have long term implications for millions, and even more so with their disclosure.

What other corporation are you going to buy from, when you’re not the customer in the first place, but have been commoditised to be their product?

How do you protect the product, if the corporation and it’s customers have no incentive to do so themselves?

The only monopolies are government-granted, otherwise startups quickly eat their lunch. They use each misbehavior of another corporation as a competitive advantage. See Apple vs Facebook in privacy stance.

But governments, they are monopolistic by definition. And the answer to no one. Army? Seizing land? Pollution??? Well the people of Africa could tell you some stories about their governments...

Or maybe you remember the USA govt detonating countless nuclear weapons over the USA soil...

This is Hacker News, so this is somewhat relevant. How in the world was Microsoft's monopoly on the PC operating system market a decade ago, a government granted monopoly?

It wasn't. So they the competition quickly routed around them and made them irrelevant. Where's Microsoft "monopoly" today?

In a free market a monopolistic company is just an invitation for the competition to a rich easily accessible lunch. The (naturally occurring) monopoly is short-lived.

Unless there is regulation. Regulation raises the barrier of entry, discourages start-ups and thus protects the monopolistic company from the competition.

It's quite logical, really.

> It wasn't.

It was ruled in 2001 that Microsoft, indeed, had a monopoly on the PC operating system market which they used to overtake the browser market. They did this through private contracts with OEMs and distributors such that all PCs sold to customers were to include Windows and only Windows.

> Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Software, RealNetworks, Linux, and others. [1]

> So they the competition quickly routed around them and made them irrelevant.

That's certainly true for some of their products, such as Internet Explorer, but certainly not for Windows on the desktop.

The PC operating system market is not the server or mobile OS market.

> Where's Microsoft "monopoly" today?

They own the PC operating system market.

> Unless there is regulation. Regulation raises the barrier of entry, discourages start-ups and thus protects the monopolistic company from the competition.

Microsoft created barriers of entry into both the PC operating system and browser markets through anti-competitive tactics. If by government regulation, you mean "court enforced contracts", I'd agree with your premise.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

I meant it wasn't a governments mandated monopoly - I agree with you and that they built a monopoly through anti-competitive practices.

But my point is that didn't last as the market punished them for it and made them irrelevant. The market moved to mobiles and web and today they are a good player in the industry.

Even on desktop where they still enjoy a healthy margin, it's not monopoly: Windows is ~80% while Mac OS and others take the other 20%.

> But my point is that didn't last as the market punished them for it and made them irrelevant. The market moved to mobiles and web and today they are a good player in the industry.

This was your point and it's also what I addressed:

> The only monopolies are government-granted, otherwise startups quickly eat their lunch.

You claimed that monopolies are only possible through government regulation, because government regulation creates a barrier to entry that's easily surpassed by larger companies.

I provided proof illustrating that monopolies have been built through private agreements absent of government regulation.

This is a libertarian fantasy. Large companies can stay solvent by undercutting smaller companies and killing their business. This is what would happen if we were to remove regulations and restrictions. You wouldn't end up with a perfect competition utopia you end up with a dystopian garbage reality where the business elite control even more than they already do.

And yet we are having this conversation on a site dedicated to this "libertarian fantasy", with countless examples of startups disrupting large, existing companies.

Reality contradicts your "dystopia".

> This is what would happen if we were to remove regulations and restrictions. You wouldn't end up with a perfect competition utopia you end up with a dystopian garbage reality where the business elite control even more than they already do.

Reality has a number of regulations and restrictions. The dystopia GP describes is a world without these regulations and restrictions, not the reality we inhabit today.

Funny enough, startups and competition thrive exactly in those pockets of reality with less restrictions and regulations, while large companies and monopolies rule the heavily regulated markets.

Large companies rule every market. Startups thrive in niches, not pockets with less restrictions and regulations. Once a market is established it becomes incredibly hard for new companies to enter and compete not matter the regulations as larger companies can take advantage of scale.

Perfect competition exists almost no where, and you should read up on the conditions when it is allowed to take place. Regulations are part of the equation, but not nearly all of it.

Large companies ARE startups who became successful. Until they are dethroned in turn by other startups.

Large companies are relatively easy to disrupt, since they usually respond slowly to market changes and they are much less efficient than a lean startup. The "advantages of scale" you are so fixated on are just a small part of the whole picture and what large corps gain at scale, they lose at management costs and through lack of innovation

It is a natural process, with countless examples all around us. A healthy process too, since it promotes competition and innovation.

But this process is interrupted by regulation. Regulation protects the incumbents, that is why large companies love it. They'd rather regulate than innovate. Indeed, when startups aren’t allowed to compete (by governments) large companies dominate and the market stagnates.

Yes but the point is that what is 'misbehaving' is defined by market norms. 'Misbehaving' is engaging in behavior which decreases profit but it can never help us to escape the question of profit altogether. That's what government is for - when what is good for society and what is good for profit conflict government steps in to correct. The point of markets is that they rely on only individual decisions and what may seem like a rational individual decision to every member of society may lead to an overall outcome that no member of society supports. In those instances we have democratic government to allow us to reach out of the realm of individual and act in a collective self-interest. That in recent years our government has been malfunctioning in a way that suppresses our ability to act this way is not an argument to get rid of democratic governance altogether, it's an argument to bring it back and strengthen it.

A well functioning government, does, ideally, what you describe. But most governments in the world (maybe except a few western ones) are, as I was saying, incredibly disfunctional.

And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc.

Forgive me if I’ll prefer businesses over governments every day.

> And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc.

You're comparing a giant to a nest of angry ants. The giant sometimes tramples houses; the ants don't. One might conclude the ants are therefore gentler, and wonder much better life would be under giant ants instead of the giant, neglecting that if the ants had the giant's power, they would be far more deadly than it.

absolutely agree.

I'd still rather live with angry (but benign) ants than a giant.

The ants cannot get the giants power, no matter how hard they try, so I'm comfortable with the ants.

(The thought experiment - what happens if Facebook tries to arrest someone? I'd be _so_ curious to watch the proceedings.)

Absolutely.

Which is why we need to get rid of that power in the first place.

The problem is not the entity, it is the power, no matter who holds it.

Even if the power of individual vote seems very small, It can be used to instigate change. One can argue that in order to increase the power of people, one has to reduce the power of corporation lobbying etc.

Corporations are vast entities of unaccountable power when they are unregulated by a government.

Chomsky's criticism of corporations holds good, and is becoming prophetic in all accounts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYxGkFxb7f4

Just recent elections show "the power of the individual vote" used to support things like Brexit in UK, Orban in Hungary, Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Maduro in Venezuela or, why not, Trump.

While the evil corporations give us, what, surveillance?!

We've never lived under corporations, but we’d always fear them. I for one, fear more the evil I know and I see ruining our world: politicians and their instruments of power, governments.

> While the evil corporations give us, what, surveillance?!

They've given us genocide, environmental destruction, the company town, the risk of being killed for striking, financial collapse, the funding of drug lords and terrorism[1].

[1] https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1616991,0...

All those given to us also by governments but a thousand times worse, along with wars, dictators, mass genocides, race purges, and so on and so forth.

I look around me and every single object I use and makes my life better was made by a corporation. From my PC to my phone to my house and my card.

While every single thing that makes me fear tomorrow and sucks in my life is controlled by governments: health care, roads, bureaucrats, borders, international conflicts, corruption, etc.

I don't fear Facebook knowing everything about me and selling that info to third parties, but I do fear my government buying that info from FB and using it restrict my freedoms in the name of my own good or simply to steal more money from me.

> I look around me and every single object I use and makes my life better was made by a corporation.

Markets work well for most commodities.

On the other hand, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid ensure that people don't die so they can hopefully go on to enjoy a better life.

> I don't fear Facebook knowing everything about me and selling that info to third parties

A KGB, but for advertising, still collects and centralizes private info that can be abused by any party, governmental or private. A recent example of that exact dataset being abused by a private entity: the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Also, insurers and repo-men love accurate location tracking etc. Your insurers most likely aren't using that information to give you better rates.

Corporations have ruined most of asian nations. East India Company British exploited India, looting it from a country having top wealth in world to the bottom, Dutch East India Company destroyed indigenous asian trade.

Fruit companies and other monopolies of USA have routinely looted and exploited people and wealth of Latin American.

I can go on, recent history is rife with corporations exploiting nations for natural resource and wealth.

Businesses get punished by markets when they operate inefficiently. They do not get punished by markets when they poison, cheat, rob, or kill people - especially when those people aren't their customers.

This is mainly true in competitive markets. Markets aren’t always competitive. We could argue we live in an oligarchy which isn’t as competitive as we are taught.