Anti-Trust and Monopoly (with Ron Paul)

Professor Dominick T. Armentano and Congressman Ron Paul discuss anti-trust and monopoly. Recorded 13 July 1983.

For more free resources and media discussing anti-trust and monopoly, visit the Ludwig von Mises Institute at Mises.org.

• Category

  News & Politics

[Mark Campbell]

People think business owners love capitalism, but actually capitalism benefits the consumer not the businesses in competition. People improperly blame the free market when they see something unfair in the market, when the true culprit is always government and laws designed to give a business a special advantage over it's competitors. Regulations are the result of industry organizations lobbying congress to their advantage.

[BIackOp]

For the state.

[Eli Wiedrich]

its kind of like ronald reagan said "governments don't tend to solve problems, they just rearrange them"

[TheNavigateur]

If they believe in maximizing profit above all else, they'll do that. Lowering prices won't always do that: price too low & the low margins don't make up even for increased sales. Price too high & the high margins don't make up for the decreased sales.

What's actually good for the CONSUMER is to make the formation of Willette ILLEGAL (which HAS been illegal in US domestic industries since 1890).

If this extended to oil, diamonds etc., their prices would come crashing down too due to competition.

[noway63244]

You're right. Willette will save money. The question is what do they do with that savings?

1) Keep the extra profit. This doesn't hurt consumers, but does benefit shareholders.

2) Lower prices to get more business. This benefits consumers & shareholders at the expense of competitors.

3) Try to increase prices. If they succeed in doing so, their competition will expand.

Only #3 has the potential to be bad. But like ACDC7369 said, we don't have historical examples of this actually happening.

[TheNavigateur]

Monopoly & lack of competition does NOT create inefficiency. Efficiency's ALWAYS incentivized in a cartel, as it maximizes profit by minimizing costs! Don't you know anything? The whole point of "Willette" is to SAVE money on R&D, because they (Wilkinson Sword and Gillette) no longer have to compete with one another, only with the 3rd-best player (who'd also be profit-incentivized to join instead of competing). Thus for THEM it's an efficiency. There's plenty of real-world evidence for that.

[ACDC7369]

There is no evidence that any monpolies or cartels have ever survived for a significant amount of time or dominance over the free market without govt assistance. This is because monopoly and lack of competition always create inefficiency, which in turn breeds competition. Not only does your position contradict basic logic, but there is no historical evidence backing any of it up.

[TheNavigateur]

Actually I edited the message. Read this comments page for the edited version. I modified the last sentence to better explain it.