Comment by eldude | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eldude | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

A monopoly does not kill competition, it disuades it. Nobody competes with the monopoly because the incentives are not great enough to do so. The same incentives for success do not disappear because a monopoly emerges. The monopoly must still sell their item to a free market that's free to refuse their goods on moral or pragmatic grounds. A monopoly means solely that they are not challenged by a competitor and can therefore sell their product beholden only to demand, and not supply. Again, this is a _good_ thing.

The demand of the consumers that products be offered at the price they want, as opposed to the company's, is again plain and simple _greed_.

Let's not be coy about it. Consumers want more for less and they seek to use the government and the tyranny of the masses to force corporations, the private property of others, to give it to them. Again, this conduct is reprehensible and any government that encourages it will only be hurting itself and its citizens.

Let me repeat that, a monopoly is not some magical power to force one's will upon the people. In a free market, a monopoly remains subject to the demand of the market and cannot and will not succeed by offering a product nobody wants. Success is not anti-competitive, far from it! Success is the greatest incentive for competition that has ever existed.

You're forcing your desires onto a free market that is clearly making its own choice. You're proclaiming to know more about what's best for people than they do. Leave the free market alone, empower and grant the people their free will, educate, and if you want to change the world, do so by competing and earning it, not by undermining others' rights to satisfy your own ideology.

The governments are (local) monopolies that supply a product(customers) to businesses on the governemnts terms. So, using your logic businesses can choose on moral or pragmatic grounds not to buy from these monopolies (i.e. set up in another country). Please continue to argue how a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a good thing while arguing a single incumbent asserting its market dominance is a bad thing.

Monopolies which no one is free to compete against (e.g., the federal government) are corrupt monopolies. They use the force of a gun to force the will and goods of other to serve their own selfish greed. The founding fathers of the United States understood this, and instituted a federal system in which states were not only free, but expected to compete against each other. Unfortunately, those who seek power and control over others and their rights recognized this obstacle, and have gradually coerced and persuaded the populace toward supporting an increasingly larger federal government at the expense of free competition amongst states. No one is legally allowed to compete with the federal government, and thus any endeavor in which it labors who's sole purpose is not to uphold the rights of its people, is corrupt. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this corruption, whether out of malice or negligence is of no importance.

There is no contradiction.

A successful business progressing to the point of an earned "monopoly", is still beholden to both competitors and a free market. It has neither violence nor coercion as means to enforce its interests. However, a government monopoly (note the lack of quotes), retains the privilege to force by means of violence any that refuse its product. If you refuse to pay taxes, you will go to jail. If you refuse to go to jail, you will be forced to go to jail. If you refuse to be forced to go to jail against your life, your life will be taken from you. You are not free in this transaction; there is no nobility in the greed of the government to take what it wants at your expense.

It would serve you well to brush up on the definition of a monopoly, specifically as Webster defines it[1]:

  exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

The important distinction here being "legal privilege". The _federal_ government maintains the sole legal privilege to be the provider of many goods and services which _no other entity is allowed to provide_. Google does not enjoy such a legal privilege and is competing in, please excuse the very loose use of the phrase, a free market.

Please do not co-opt the word monopoly so trivially.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

So you change your argument from monopolies are fine to monopolies are fine unless they're corrupt, that's fine I'm happy with that clarification, but you must realise that these regulations are there to stop abuse by the corrupt monopolies. So guess what a judge found that google had a monopolistic grip and in this particular instance were abusing it. It's fine to disagree with the judge or even these specific regulations but you obviously believe large enterties(such as the US government) should have restrictions placed on them to stop abuse yet seem to say a little later that large entities (businesses) should not have restrictions on them to stop abuse. I can't understand how this is logically coherent.

I'm also confused by your highlighting of the definition of the word monopoly, are you saying that equating governments to regional monopolies is a flawed analogy or are you just highlighting that one form of monopoly relies on legal enforcement and therefore pointing out that governments are monopolies. Maybe you are saying that google is not a monopoly in this instance, I'd be inclined to agree but would point out that "exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action" as far as geographic data and infrastructure in place would be an arguable position. If you argue against that on the grounds that others could sink in capital to create there own method of supplying data, then I'd argue that the government is about equally removable in that the customers can vote for change (I to believe that's a joke just like your statement on how reliant the monopoly is to any given customer).

I'm distinguishing between a "monopoly" as is used commonly (and loosely) like in this case to describe Google and a true monopoly, which by definition no one is able to compete with equally, like the US federal government. I think that "monopolies" (Google, any entity that doesn't use the government backed by force to protect it from having to compete equally) are okay, but a monopoly is not, and is prone to corruption, thus our founding fathers' belief in limited government.

This isn't my disagreeing with the judge, this is my disagreeing with their right to try Google in the first place, a power which _no_ government should have: the right to try and punish someone for a future intention of exercising one's property rights. It is France's violation of these human rights which I find reprehensible.

Regarding "monopolies" having no restrictions placed on them, this is true in the extent that the government is concerned. The government should neither help nor restrain individual businesses, and should instead create an equal environment where property and contract rights are enforced, and companies are not found guilty of success by the greed of others with a government that sanctions such greed.

I highlighted the definition of a monopoly, because everyone is throwing that word around without any regard for its meaning. Google does not have exclusive ownership of maps through any legal sanction; It does not have command of supply as a Google map is a combination of bits and knowledge of information that is freely available to _anyone_ that would take the time and had the incentive to assemble them; There is no concerted action as there's no 2nd party with which Google has been acting with.

Finally, I never said a monopoly is beholden to _a_ customer, but instead to _its_ costomer_s_. A company in a free market cannot exist in perpetuity without providing some value for which someone will trade their money for. So long as both parties are free to trade value for value, no monopoly exists.

I enjoyed your response by the way.

In a democracy, free markets don't make the choices. The people do.

And the means by which they do it is with their voice and their vote, not their wallets.

People are more than just consumers. Consumer behavior is driven by many other factors then what people actually want, and the free market does not necessarily reflect the will of the people.

Free will is more than just being able to decide whether or not to consume shit.

Then God bless that the United States is a Republic[1] and not a Democracy, such that my rights should never be beholden to such contemptible motives.

Also, this is a very materialistic view of money. You falsely assume that money's sole use is the acquisition of material goods, and not what it really is, the transfer of value.

Wealthy and poor alike choose to donate to and support causes they see as perpetuating their values. Are you really suggesting that an individual that wants for no goods to consume has no use of money? No.

What you are proposing is that to those who refuse, by virtue of their property rights, to give you what you want, you would take from them at the point of a gun upon non-compliance that which they would not give you. _This_ is the tyranny of the majority, a true democracy, a form of government our founding fathers held in disdain.

I suspect that you hold this view of money because you find that no amount of it would grant you the power to take that which you desire to obtain through a democracy, the violation of other rights.

[1] Art. 4 Sec. 4 Par. 1 http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html

Self-righteous indignation ahoy! We must have entered yet another ideal-free-markets vs. everything else discussion on Hacker News.

Frustrated as you may be that others don't share your ideals here, your entire comment is huge, deep red, herring.

And there is much more to monopolies than just 'success', you silly. Ever heard of the Microsoft tax? Every OEM was in a losing position if they dared to offer a non-Microsoft OS among their product lines, as they would be sold their licenses at a higher cost (i.e., not at a monetary discount resulting of a virtuous association between entrepreneurs) than every other player in the game.

Thus, even if there was demand for alternatives, if it didn't overtake the loss incurred by higher cost-licenses then it wouldn't be viable to offer say, Linux machines.

I don't expect anyone to share my values, nor do I care if they do for the sake of the argument, as you'll note below where I went out of my way to thank @arg01 for his reasoned argument.

You probably won't like this, but those businesses existed because of what Microsoft created and it deserved to charge whatever it liked to its customers. We are speaking here of rights, not virtues or morality, so you'll find my "self-righteous indignation" to be in short supply. Just as Microsoft was free to charge what they liked for the fruits of their labor, OEMs were free to not attempt to profit off a product Microsoft created. Microsoft made its money from selling software, an intangible thing of no value without hardware to run it on. Those OEMs existed because they were able to create hardware better than Microsoft. Obviously though, it was Windows that was of more value (more difficult to create) of the two, which is why Microsoft held more leverage. This is a _good_ thing to have success rewarded.

No company has a right to profits. In a free market they must compete by the merits of the value they offer to free men.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com