Comment by kortilla
7 hours ago
Western free market doesn’t create monopolies. Where did you get that idea?
The only place monopolies tend to emerge is heavily regulated areas that allow for regulatory capture (laying fiber is a great example of this).
> The only place monopolies tend to emerge is heavily regulated areas that allow for regulatory capture (laying fiber is a great example of this).
No, actually laying fiber is a great example of the problem with a free market.
It's not regulations that make it hard to put down fiber, it's property rights. Without some sort of regulation or government action (such as eminent domain) it's impossible to build out modern infrastructure. There will always be some person with property right in the way of a cable line. You can beg and plead with them to let you bury a line (including pointing out that it's very temporary disruption of soil) and they can still just say no.
It isn't unusual for a phone company that's looking at a difficult land owner to say "ok, screw it, we'll just have to take a 90 mile detour because the guy that owns that 500 yard strip won't let us bury here". Imagine how much harder that is if the land owner is related to or owns stock in a competitor company.
We have been able to lay as much fiber as we have in the US because there's a bunch of regulations around right of way that ultimately grants burying rights near public roads to utilities companies like ISPs. Without those, it'd be almost impossible.
Property rights are regulation. You’re just vehemently agreeing with me. Markets filled with laws that make entry difficult are subject to monopolies.
If property rights are regulation, then so is anything that allows you to ignore them.
Once you get down to the level of property rights, the only alternative left is total might-makes-right anarchy.
Property rights are some of the earliest and most basic things protected by governments—indeed, to a large extent they precede governments, being protected with force by the people who wish to assert them.
Wipe out all regulations, all laws, all property rights, and try to run fiber across someone's property without their permission, and they're likely to come out with a shotgun and start shooting everyone digging. Follow the steps logically from that point, and you'll fairly quickly start reinventing governments and regulations.
The "only" place monopolies tend to emerge in is any market with a significant barrier to entry. Regulatory regime can be one such barrier, but e.g. up-front capital costs and network effects are other barriers to entry that can and will lead to monopolies.
> Western free market doesn’t create monopolies.
To quote myself: "the Western-style free market is very keen on creating and maintaining monopolies"
Guess who's the highly influential investor, with strong connection to the WH who said the following:
"Competition is for losers".
This sums up pretty well what the free market is keen on.
It is well known that individual businessmen often want to reduce competition, because it's best for them. That is why the government's important role in the free market is to promote competition. But just because the market is imperfect and can be captured without the government making sure that people play fair, does not mean that the free market is "a lie" as TFA claims. It means that it's imperfect, as are all human endeavors.
A participant is not the market. Competitors very famously hate competition.
> to quote myself
Okay, totally meaningless, it didn’t prove anything.
Or in places where network effects make it impossible to compete.