Re:The Rent Seeking Economy
by dragonwriter on Tuesday April 16, 2013 @01:34PM
(#5559525)
> The free market does not tend towards monopoly or oligopoly. If any one player is gaining market power and capturing a lot of consumer surplus, then competition will eventually find a route around that and supply an alternative with better value.
This is true under the usual simplifying first-week-of-Econ 101 assumptions (which exclude economies of scale, barriers to entry, irrationality -- including imperfect consumer information about the utilities realized in purchases, interaction between markets [note that the last two interact in an important way, in that enough money derived from one market and applied to the information market can drive imperfect consumer information in a particular direction], etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum), which are useful for pedagogical purposes at that stage but tend not to exist in the real world in the markets for a wide variety of goods.
Re:The Rent Seeking Economy
by brc on Wednesday April 17, 2013 @11:24PM
(#5568759)
Can you please provide an example of where a monopoly has formed with no state power involved? I am interested in this area and want to find any real world examples.
This is true under the usual simplifying first-week-of-Econ 101 assumptions (which exclude economies of scale, barriers to entry, irrationality -- including imperfect consumer information about the utilities realized in purchases, interaction between markets [note that the last two interact in an important way, in that enough money derived from one market and applied to the information market can drive imperfect consumer information in a particular direction], etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum), which are useful for pedagogical purposes at that stage but tend not to exist in the real world in the markets for a wide variety of goods.
This has been proven time and time again.