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OUR unemployment rate
#29
RE: OUR unemployment rate
(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: You didn't cover that. You say that monopolies are exclusive owners of a product in a market; I'm fine with that. My point was that there is nothing stopping another person from coming along and selling the same product (or similar product) on the market either...at least no in free market capitalism.

I don't think you're being realistic here. A single company controls the industry and there's nothing stopping anyone from making money in that industry? The giant elephant in the room would have to be public influence, social influence, and political influence. When you have a monopoly, you can control the price of the product, materials, and manufacturing techniques. You can also influence the likelihood of competitors coming into the market by funding legislative efforts to stifle smaller competition and innovation. This is what happens in the real world. Monopolies are NOT a good thing and they rarely have the best products on the market.

What you're proposing would take all the regulation OUT of these practices, essentially let the company do whatever it wants to eliminate its competition. No amount of free market self-regulation could keep a monopoly from exercising its power, and being an industry controlling entity, it would be nearly impossible for any smaller company to be competitive in any arena.


(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I already addressed the issue of buyouts. If you suspect a monopoly company might attempt a buyout, don't float your market on the stock exchange...at least not until you can actually get some good supportive investors.

For most small businesses, an IPO is the only viable way to attract attention when going up against bigger, more established companies.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: How are we going to get the water? Do you really need to ask that? It rains; there are oceans, rivers, lakes. Use your head.

What if the larger company already holds rights to the oceans, rivers, lakes, and rain? Just thinking hypothetically here.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: If I am a business owner, and my entire business depends on the satisfaction of my consumers, then complaints (when taken en-masse) are very important to the stability of my company. If one month, 10% of my consumers send in complaints, it's 10% of my profit that might suddenly switch to a new company that forms. My point was that monopolies can exist, but not indefinitely. It takes only one other company to be set up in order for the monopoly to cease to exist (as a monopoly). No business owner in their right mind would act as if they will have a monopoly forever, and thus complaints must be taken seriously. 10% complaining could result in 10% loss if a new company emerges that offers a better or cheaper product, and if more and more people go to that new company, advertising by word of mouth will grow, and my profits will decrease even more. It's called competition. I must change my business plan, lose a bit of profit by doing so (but by a significantly lower amount that losing consumers) and increase customer satisfaction.

It's not a good analogy, as most monopolies don't make customer service a top priority. The monopolies in the world acknolwedge their role and understand that they control the industry. It is simply put, their way or no way at all. Their main goal would be to cut costs, eliminate competition, and maximize profits, rather than improve the product as demands increase for a non-existing competing product.

Word of mouth advertising can't realistically compete with actual advertising campaigns by industry leaders. There's a reason Apple got popular in the last decade, and it's not because of word of mouth. Their marketing catered to an audience that was overlooked by Microsoft, and in an age where the software giant was faced with antitrust suits, they had no choice but to concede market share. It still is the undeniable leader of the industry, but it is regulation that made it step down a few notches, not the free market doing its thing.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: According to the Wikipedia article you cited, this was a state (i.e government) based industry in the first place. I've never argued that the market shouldn't have regulations, but these regulations are market-based, not government based. The market will regulate itself through consumer / producer conversation, petition, and supply / demand.

That is laissez-faire economics, and I illustrated in my last post why it is economic suicide. People don't work this way, it's not practical at all.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Yeah...and that's favouritism. That isn't a free market principle. If a company refused to do business with a startup it could be legally challenged, and the startup would win. Of course, it probably wouldn't even get to trial as I doubt in a free market you'd even get this situation. A company wants to maximise its profits; having only one customer isn't exactly doing that.
With no regulation, there would be no challenge legally. I also think Saerules meant the highest bidder in terms of public and market segments, not individual consumers.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I've addressed the fallacy of claiming that they will get bought out. The only way that will happen is if the industry giant sits down with the small company and writes a figure down on a piece of paper.

Yes, but there are MANY ways an industry giant can make a smaller company actually consider what's on that piece of paper. Have you heard of a hostile takeover?

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: The control of whether the small company accepts or rejects the offer is entirely in the hands of the person in charge of the company, exactly how it should be. You can't "force" anything unless the company floats on the stock market, and I've already said how that isn't necessary for a startup to do.

To compete with the big boys, going public is one of the best things a company can do. It's not in the hands of the person in charge if their only option is going under, or being bought out. There can be many facets of influence in a buyout situation.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: I a company goes bankrupt, it clearly wasn't producing a good enough product to rival that of the industry giant, and as I stated before, this would be an example of a monopoly working. If you have a product that your competitors cannot make profit on, you clearly have a very high satisfaction rate.

Wrong. If a company goes bankrupt, there are many ways it could have failed. Raw materials, such as those controlled by monopolies, could have become too pricey. Tariffs and embargos could have been set in place. Manufacturing costs could have increased due to upped price in resources. Price points could have been too high for the public. Distrubutors may have had contracts with larger companies or monopolies.

This can all be circumvented by a monopoly. They can have the ability to outsource labor and resources, negotiate lower prices on raw materials, and influence foreign governments to lower tariffs, all the while buying product in bulk to lower costs for the consumer. Even though the quality and competitive advantage can be higher at a competing brand, the company can still go under due to lack of funding.

Bankruptcy doesn't necessarily have anything to do with quality of product.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: As I've already said, I don't oppose regulation of the market, as long as it comes naturally to the market. This regulation however, is imposed by the PEOPLE layer of the chain. A real-world example would be the sets of internet standards (that govern HTTP, HTML, etc) which multiple companies have signed up to and pledged to "obey". These standards are written by people, not the government, and are imposed upon all products that use HTTP / HTML (so that includes all browsers).

You're confusing a standard of technology with a regulation of market conduct. You're also citing that the people can agree on standards , but somehow if the government made that standard, it would be wrong, even if it came to the same conclusion. "Coming naturally" to the market is a hard sell, especially when it's a company's tendency to buy from the lowest bidder and sell to the highest bidder. Governmental regulation isn't there to stifle progress, but to promote diversity and competition, by making sure the largest companies don't get so large that it's impossible for any others to join the party. With laissez-faire, monopolies are an inevitability, not just an idle concern.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: You ever wonder why Internet Explorer has been getting better at rendering HTML pages in recent years? It's because the W3C came up with standards and browsers like Firefox and Chrome were better at implementing them, resulting in people (consumers) switching from I.E to Firefox / Chrome. Microsoft finally dedicates some of its development to making sure that I.E conforms to standards, in the hopes that it'll get back some of its market share.

Yes, and you ever wonder how consumers got a hold of other web browsers? Through the regulation of the market and the developments of antitrust cases on this very subject. Microsoft was forced to package other browsers in their operating systems, or at least give the choice. This opened up a host of innovations and led to the modern-day Firefox and Opera browsers. The technology was always there, governmental regulation just made it more accessible.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Imagine if Microsoft sold I.E as an piece of shareware, and that Mozilla sold Firefox, Google sold Chrome, etc. Nobody regulated the distribution of those pieces of software amongst the users but the users themselves. This is a natural market regulation.

Imagine that Mozilla made an advertising campaign that sold Firefox, and started making exclusivity contracts with all major chains of software retailers. In addition, they negotiated rates to make their media more affordable, which in turn made price a selling point, as opposed to Chrome. Mozilla then goes further and makes Firefox the standard browser on every computer sold in the country, making Chrome all but obsolete and IE a viable, but less and less known solution, as advertising for IE is scarce. After a while, even if the other browsers had more to offer, they couldn't come close to the distribution and price juggernaut that is Firefox.

There's absolutely nothing stopping any one of them from becoming a monopoly and putting the others out of business by way of brute strength and market dominance.

(March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Oh, and if you were wondering, even though I think Windows is a shoddy OS at best, I'm still against the EU pressuring them to put a "choose your browser" screen on the thing. They haven't done the same thing for Mac, or Linux, only Microsoft. Most people will know about alternative browsers from friends, web adverts, articles, etc anyway. I say let people come to Firefox and Chrome by themselves. There is no reason to force Microsoft to advertise their competition.

Mac and Linux don't have more than 90% market share, that was the point. It's not that other browsers weren't good enough, it was nearly impossible for them to make any money in the industry and promote their product. Free market is about having the best product and business model, not who can amass the greatest influence in distribution to stifle competition. It would be an economic version of eugenics, realistically.
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Messages In This Thread
OUR unemployment rate - by padraic - March 11, 2010 at 10:13 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Zhalentine - March 11, 2010 at 11:07 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 11, 2010 at 11:50 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 12, 2010 at 2:20 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by fr0d0 - March 12, 2010 at 12:51 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 1:02 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by fr0d0 - March 12, 2010 at 2:08 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 2:53 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 12, 2010 at 3:20 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 3:28 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 12, 2010 at 3:50 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Violet - March 12, 2010 at 4:24 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by fr0d0 - March 12, 2010 at 3:29 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 3:36 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 9:04 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by tavarish - March 12, 2010 at 10:22 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 12, 2010 at 10:39 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by tavarish - March 13, 2010 at 4:49 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 12, 2010 at 11:27 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Violet - March 13, 2010 at 5:16 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 13, 2010 at 12:05 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Violet - March 13, 2010 at 5:29 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 13, 2010 at 6:11 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by tavarish - March 13, 2010 at 7:46 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by LEDO - March 13, 2010 at 8:13 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Autumnlicious - March 13, 2010 at 11:39 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Frank - March 13, 2010 at 1:44 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 13, 2010 at 5:38 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Autumnlicious - March 14, 2010 at 4:25 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Violet - March 13, 2010 at 6:08 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by LEDO - March 14, 2010 at 8:11 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 14, 2010 at 11:25 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Frank - March 14, 2010 at 1:00 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 14, 2010 at 11:58 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Tiberius - March 14, 2010 at 1:57 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Frank - March 15, 2010 at 2:05 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by LEDO - March 15, 2010 at 5:49 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 15, 2010 at 6:47 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by padraic - March 16, 2010 at 2:05 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by tavarish - March 16, 2010 at 2:09 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by padraic - March 16, 2010 at 2:22 am
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Rhizomorph13 - March 16, 2010 at 1:47 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by Rhizomorph13 - March 16, 2010 at 2:42 pm
RE: OUR unemployment rate - by theblindferrengi - March 16, 2010 at 3:14 pm

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