FM wrote:
Burwhale wrote:
Sure the consumer gets cheap prices while they crush the opposition. Once they have taken over and become a monopoly they can charge whatever they want. Then the consumer loses, big time!
Then another environment for competition is created.
An environment where every new market entrant is gobbled up immediately by the incumbent monopoly so it can maintain free reign over the price of a particular product (the price of which would necessarily decrease if a competitor existed).
Flaming_Maniac wrote:
We don't rely on their benevolence, if they raised prices (aside from global rioting) it would force a shift in our culture away from petroleum products, just as it is now. The higher the price, the bigger market for alternatives, forcing OPEC to either drop prices or drop business.
FM - as you well know there are currently no alternatives and there won't be for 30 to 40 years. As such, we are getting sucked dry for as much as they think we can handle: making hay while the sun shines.
Flaming_Maniac wrote:
There would be more competition for Microsoft if Windows couldn't be obtained for free so easily. They are essentially competing with a morally inferior but much cheaper version of themselves.
So you're saying that free market capitalism is working because black markets have developed? That fundamentally exposes the fact the supply-demand system has broken down! Economics 101.
Flaming_Maniac wrote:
There is always room for competition in a truly free economy, if headed by a cunning businessman/woman. Government intervention to prop up companies in order to maintain some semblance of competition does nothing but promote weak business traits. Is nursing the genetically inferior animal back to health and releasing it back into the wild the best thing for the species as a whole?
Not when each cunning businessman/woman can be edged out instantly before they've even secure an entrepeneurial loan when the incumbent monopoly gobbles them up - as Microsoft have long done, as have other corporations. Your second point is irrelevant - I'm not talking about promoting weak business - mergers generally involve a massive and successful company buying a smaller successful company - there is no 'weak business' about it: all that is happening is that a reduction in the level of competition is taking place.