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Comment by gustavus | Hacker News Reader

> Nope, you can’t the-free-market-will-fix-everything this one. The telco lobbyists wrote the government regulations

Just a point of clarification, the free market generally means independence from government regulation. This isn't the free market failing so much as incumbents using the power of government to force their advantage, part of the argument of the free market is that by not allowing the government to interfere in this manner no one can get laws written to benefit them because the government doesn't get involved in the first place. Now granted that's in a frictionless airless world with spherical cows. But to say the free market failed and the very next sentence say it is because of regulation from the government is oxymoronic.

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The definition of "a free market" you're offering here is one that has never existed. So we can either talk about the free markets we have (which compared to markets in other places and at other times are stupendously free) or we can talk about, yes, spherical cows.

Even in this version of the free market, monopoly is still the incentive and end goal. Eventually, either a single player wins out (possibly by buying or merging with previous competitors) or a few big players agree that colluding with each other is more profitable then competing (remember there is no government interfering in this free market to prevent this). Once this happens, new players won't enter the market because they can immediately be crushed by the incumbent.

So either way, monopoly is the inevitable end point.

Monopoly is only an incentive if it is clear that it will be permitted.

But it always is though. In a government regulated economy, there is regulatory capture and lobbying to create industry friendly laws that allow monopoly (aka our current system). In a fully free market, then there is no laws to prevent monopoly.

And by monopoly, I am also referring to systems where there are a few big players that just don't compete against one another, or one where there is a big player and a few small but inconsequential players. All of these result in the same effect as plain monopoly.

Especially with natural monopolies like infrastructure, there is no economic case to overbuild most power grids, water/sewer districts, Telecom infrastructure or natural gas networks regardless of regulation.

The rare times you see overbuilding there is always a scheme involved, whether it's Comcast's recent edge outs to appear as though they aren't bleeding internet customers, or government money incentivising an overbuild cause the current ISP didn't document that they serve a set of addresses.

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