Many people on this site say that natural monopolies do not occur and can only exist due to government. How would you explain Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, and JP Morgan and Co? Didn’t they have a monopoly status that was split by the state?

The Myth of Natural Monopoly | Thomas DiLorenzo

Standard Oil was far from being a monopoly. It was the largest oil company, but there were many others in such way that Standard Oil was not even 75% of the whole oil industry.

Only Standard Oil was broken up and that was when its market share IN THE USA , it was lower in Europe, dropped to 60%. It was at one time 95%. I did not think US Steel was ever broken up. JP Morgan never had a monopoly of any sort although it may have been the largest and most power bank in US hist…

I agree with everything all the repliers have posted. I would also add that in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil grew to such bloated size because it was protected from foreign competition by extremely high tariffs implemented by the Republican Party. As accepted at the time, t…

Standard oil also attempted illegal or immoral methods. Like buying all of the barrels that they could afford so that their competitors we’re pumping oil and couldn’t store it. They also paid state militias (the early national guard) to enforce work conditions that people didn’t want. John Rockefell…

A monoply exists by arbitrary extant legal definitions, there is nothing market science can say about monopolies as it is not a scientific concept, but rather an aesthetic one.

These lectures by Murray Rothbard (The American Economy and the End of Laissez-Faire) are great fun and detail all the nefarious dealings of businessmen and politicians of the time. They’re quite long but if convert them to mp3 you can listen to them while walking to school/work. Loading…

Except, monopoly power actually has a pretty precise definition in mainstream economics (and I think, although could be mistaken, that Mises adhered to this definition) as the ability to price over marginal cost.

How is that immoral? Were their competitors prima facie entitled to those barrels? I think you mean they paid state militias to prevent striking workers from occupying property that those workers didn’t own. That was a tragedy indeed. I certainly doubt it was intended by John Rockefeller. Fir…

Is natural monopoly really impossible?

Economics Economics Questions

John_James June 15, 2011, 1:51am 5

The Myth of Natural Monopoly

There goes the “natural monopoly” argument

Anti-trust, Anti-truth

The Truth About the “Robber Barons”

(If the music is annoying, the original lecture is here.)…

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Is natural monopoly really impossible?

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