| Howard Brazee 2006-04-18, 6:55 pm |
| On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 10:27:48 -0500, Peter Lacey <lacey@mts.net> wrote:
>It's actually that unrestricted competition leads to monopolies (or
>cartels - cf. the pretroleum industry). In any marketing battle, there
>must be winners and losers. No competitor has infinite resources, so
>sooner or later, losses will become unsustainable and somebody will drop
>out. Eventually there will only be a small number of competitors left,
>depending on the product: if all are selling the same thing, there will
>be a cartel (oil, banking, insurance); if all are zelling different
>products to do the same thing, there will be just one exceedingly
>dominant competitor left (IBM, Microsoft, Intel). And even in the first
>case, while they can chug along forever if they don't undercut each
>other too much or too often, sooner or later they'll realize that
>merging will cut costs and increase profits even more.
>
>Clark is right in his comments but such events are aberrations. The
>basic pattern remains.
Eventually competition comes anyway. The cable companies had legal
monopolies, but not technological monopolies. Even something as
basic as a grocery store chain has different guys at the top. Big
Steel and Big Autos compete with foreign companies. Microsoft
happens. Wal*Mart happens. Corporate power doesn't last longer
than dynastic power did.
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