[One Degree]

"Necessary" would imply that someone has decided the monopoly is needed. That's not it at all. It's that the cost of entering the market for a competitor is too much. You might say it is "inevitable without legal intervention". But objecting to the term that economists decided on 150 years ago is pretty pointless.

Perhaps fruitless but not pointless. We need to remind ourselves how word choice can bias a concept. I wonder if perhaps they chose 'natural ' to make a monopoly sound more palatable? Kind of hard to argue against something that is 'natural '.

[SolarCross]

Perhaps fruitless but not pointless. We need to remind ourselves how word choice can bias a concept. I wonder if perhaps they chose 'natural ' to make a monopoly sound more palatable? Kind of hard to argue against something that is 'natural '.

The word "monopoly" first came about in the days of mercantilism where monarchs would hand out exclusive licences to pursue a particular trade or trade route as a way of tying merchants' loyalty to them, making them defacto agents of the crown. Later through Smith and other agitators the merchants came up with a counter doctrine called "free trade" which debunked mercantilism freeing them up from overbearing princes, for a time. The idea of "natural" monoploys was a push back against free trade as the idea was punted that even if princes didn't peddle monopoly rights the merchants would just get "natural" monopolies from random happenstance circumstances anyway so princes "had" to still interfere in trade in order to "prevent" the monopolies which hitherto princes sought to impose.

Politics, its a game for the remorselessly devious.

[RhetoricThug]

Don't start stuff with me again, the one time was creepy enough and I will bring it to noemon.

Excuse me, what are you complaining about? You're like a person in the two minutes of hate scene, hence the link. 'Facts' for you are like soldiers fighting posters that dare ask questions. One Degree can question the definition of natural monopoly. Perhaps Microsoft looked like a natural monopoly before 1998.

The thread is called, "Social Media as a Tool for Information Warfare, One Degree made a move, and you embraced two minutes of hate. This... is.... information warfare.


Pfff...I hate explaining posts.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

Perhaps fruitless but not pointless. We need to remind ourselves how word choice can bias a concept. I wonder if perhaps they chose 'natural ' to make a monopoly sound more palatable? Kind of hard to argue against something that is 'natural '.

They're not saying a natural monopoly is a good thing. So, no, they don't use it to make it sound more palatable. The economists are saying that although the holders of the monopoly have not made any overt moves (such as collusion, buying out competitors, or having legal restrictions place on them) to create or enforce their monopoly, and could say "well, we're not stopping anyone from setting up in competition to us, so how can we have a monopoly?", the high costs of entry to the market mean they have an effective monopoly.