OP tells amusing story about how a classroom oligopoly is broken. Commenter's lesson from this? "This is a good one to throw at lolbertarians & other idiots who think that a totally free market is a good thing."
np.reddit.com/r/ProRevenge/comments/a84b93/re...Posted Dec 25, 2018, 12:22 PM UTC
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I'm mystified? Risks of truly unregulated markets and illegal collusion? It seems like a massive amount of product is produced, with price drops over time from three companies. The efforts to collude and steal market share lowered prices and left C and D behind...
Prices are going down, not up? Customers are winning, the companies are conspiring to beat each other to providing a better service, and attempts at working together ("illegal collusion") show that colluders can't be trusted and more profit comes from ignoring the cartel and lowering prices to grab market share...which is a win for the consumer.
I fail to see how this exercise doesn't show that the fears of collusion and unregulated markets are valid. In what way did the consumer lose in this scenario?!
And how is that a real world example of markets when there are literally no customers.
Your scenario is naive tho. Why wouldnt one company eventually gain the upper hand and toss its competitors out of the market?
Okay. How would they do that, in a way that doesn't help consumers but also does not involve aggression?
Well, they gain a monopoly and start raising prices, easy. Competitors dont stand a chance as they are either bought by the larger corporation or simply dont have the means to fight the monopolists budget for advertising and research.
Slight government intervention is necessary, for example to prevent a monopoly. Discuss the individual actions that need to be taken all you want, thats fine with me. But just saying "free market = best market" just doesnt cut it.
Nope. Hasn't happened. Government is not needed to stop monopolies because the market has proven that it's not possible to undercut and then jack up the price. The reality is that competition is not just "these guys over here" but rather a continuous process. Trying to jack up the prices gets you losses as other companies come back into the game at lower prices. This is theory is complete bullshit. It is not supported by empirical evidence.
And as soon as they do that, the competitors come back..
Name one instance of this ever happening in reality. You can't.
Were you planning on answering my question or not? You can't just say "they gain a monopoly and start raising prices", then what happens?