Quote from eusdaiki:
Actually the moron is got a name. IBM and Xerox, in that case, but there where other greater morons before them,
Of course, I never said a monopoly is efficient nor even smart (as if it takes any brains to run a monopoly). But it is government regulations & concerns which would prevent the obvious moves to eliminate competitors. When you are a big company like Xerox & IBM, your movement is limited. Add in the bureaucracy with some incompetence mixed in and you have leading market share companies becoming just another one of the herd.
Compare to Microsoft, which was run and controlled almost exclusively by Bill Gates with an egotistical greed consumed methodology. Very efficient & effective from a capitalism perspective. By the time the government even woke up to this phenomenon called Microsoft, it was already too late. B. Gates' tactics are worthy of studying, after all, Microsoft did really innovate or create ANYTHING worthy.
like the railroad companies at the turn of the century, they had the chance to take the aviation industry but they thought that it was only a fashion, not an industry that would change transportation.
Railroad companies that were created by a break up of a monopoly, otherwise you would have seen the aviation industry controlled by the same entity. Plus, they have a point, airlines continue to be a financial mess in need of endless bailouts by the government.
Or Spain thinking that they where richer than Brittain because they had more gold stored in their vaults {while brittain was industrializing}.
Spain still is richer than most nations due to their gold while Britain is a fraction of what they used to be. Currency devauled by over 75% and has yet to recover decades later.
That´s why you´ll never see a perfectly monopolistic market... there´s always plenty of contenders that will take the monopolists head off when given the chance.
This is PURE nonsense, I am sorry. In the histories of monopolies and oligopolies, only government intervention was able to change the game. I continue to refer back to Russia of 1990s, purely monopolistic markets. Same for USA in early 1990s, all major key industries were monopolized.
Without extensive government restrictions, the worthy contenders either get bought out or brought down, easily done without blatant coercion or fraud. I will point to the case of AT&T, the real trick was not their size & market share but the fact that they would "lose" the calls by the other carriers. Without government regulating these aspects of business, the smaller contenders simply have no chance. After all, as a capitalist in a laissez faire environment, I have no duty cooperate with my competitors. No morals in capitalism, they go against the profit & growth motives.
Not much academic economics in my rationale, most of it is derived from history. The history behind capitalism, free markets, mercantilism, monopolies & oligopolies goes back to 15th century, if not earlier. Any hypothetical ideal world scenarios you can think of have probably already been proven wrong through real life events.