Re:Is Google's looming monopoly trial a watershed moment for...
by roenxi on Thursday September 07, 2023 @09:44AM
(#37418822)
People really aren't thinking clearly about where monopolies come from. The monopolies that are scary are those formed by the government - centralised powers love monopolies! Google and Apple provide a single point of contact for the censorship regime and surveillance state. The risk here isn't Google as a monopoly, it is the government banning competition with Google under some sort of think-of-the-children or national security justification. Google wouldn't even have a monopoly on anything worth having if IP laws were more sane.
Governments generally have objectives. Those objectives are inevitably counter to what a free market would do (otherwise they'd be already achieved). It is usually easier for those objectives to be achieved in a centralised market.
There is no call to look to governments to start prosecuting monopolies. A better place to start is to stop promoting them! Loosen up the financial regulation, start reversing the centralisation of banks, promote liberty. Put in some small tweaks around the edges of contract law to make it hard to constrain the future action of individuals.
Far to often governments build a monopoly, then pretend to fight it. The starting point really should be to stop building them up. The worst monopolies are those created by regulation because they are actually inescapable.
Governments generally have objectives. Those objectives are inevitably counter to what a free market would do (otherwise they'd be already achieved). It is usually easier for those objectives to be achieved in a centralised market.
There is no call to look to governments to start prosecuting monopolies. A better place to start is to stop promoting them! Loosen up the financial regulation, start reversing the centralisation of banks, promote liberty. Put in some small tweaks around the edges of contract law to make it hard to constrain the future action of individuals.
Far to often governments build a monopoly, then pretend to fight it. The starting point really should be to stop building them up. The worst monopolies are those created by regulation because they are actually inescapable.