billyjoeallen
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billyjoeallen
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January 23, 2014, 01:39:48 PM

You've done nothing to prove that monopolies are only possible under government. That's just ancap dogma.

I'm interested in this. Not quite sure who the burden of proof should fall upon here - the one claiming that monopolies are possible only with government or the one claiming monopolies are possible without government. We certainly have lots of cases of monopolies co-existing with government, but I know of no cases of monopolies existing without government. This might primarily be because we have few cases of there being no government, period. Personally I tend to think that the institutionalization of the monopoly on coercive force is quite instrumental in upholding monopolies. I can see them being created without there being a government, but don't see them lasting very long without providing excellent products/services and/or developing government-like qualities themselves. Could you perhaps point me towards some materials supporting your claim that this is just an-cap dogma?

The original monopolies such as the East India Company were explicitly issued exclusive licenses to operate by the State. Later monopolies used more subtle means such as the rigidly-enforced patents and copyrights of Microsoft.

By contrast, Standard Oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil was given few if any special privileges by the government and is often cited for predatory practices...against competitors, but not consumers. Oil prices actually went up when anti-trust legislation broke it into thirty three separate companies. Ironically, the combined stock value of the 33 companies made Rockefeller even wealthier than he was before.