I’m thinking about starting a rival thread.
Do we?
Competition is good. It allows people to compete. Why wouldn’t you want competition?
You FEAR what you don’t understand.
You fear people that are smarter than you and invent any number of conspiracies in order to justify your sad state.
First tell us your opinion and why you think that. maybe there is nothing to discuss.
You get no participation Trophy for this thread
How did you like AT&T before it was broken up?
Were you happily using the same phone for thirty years,
never actually owing it?
How do you like dairy farmers being micro-managed so as to keep production low and prices high?
How did you like the planned-obsolescence junky cars you got from the Big Three before the invasion of foreign cars?
How do you like paying four times the world market price for sugar?
When government is the provider, there is no competition. Then we have a product so poorly made that people refuse to use it, even though it is “free”. By “free”, I mean that you are forced to pay for it even though you do not need or want it, as with all Government products, so yeah, there is no incentive to improve the product. If cable tv wasn’t a monopoly, at least one provider would be offering channels ala carte.
The only possible alternative is that someone chooses for you. Who do you propose should make those tough choices for you?
For bonus points, how does absence of competition occur without government protecting the favored business?
Monopolies and cartels don't permit competition and they therefore have no incentive to keep prices low.
Naw, no need to fear just remember what the greatest mind of all time once said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”
Competition is an offshoot of capitalism = the problem. /sarc
Hey! I’m in charge here. Anybody wants anything has to go through me.
I don't think we should be. The "anti-trust" movement was purely a progressive boondoggle.
In my opinion, a monopoly can only exist for long with the assistance of government. In a truly free market, if the monopoly attempts to fix prices higher than supply and demand would allow, then competition would quickly enter the market and force the monopoly to break up. There is no way to stop this without government shutting down competition.
As to cartels, they are most often international, but even they cannot escape the power of supply and demand for long. OPEC is a good example. The embargo of the 1970's forced prices up for a time, but then numerous competitors entered the market and de-fanged the cartel. In only a few years, the gold price of oil had declined to levels below where they had started. Since then, OPEC has wised up and now is content to make incremental increases to keep the price below the point where competition becomes active. Occasionally, they still miscalculate, as with the recent North Dakota oil boom made possible by world prices that were too high.
Not sure what you mean. Do you mean ethical/moral aspects?
For competition to not slouch into anarchy there need to be consistent rules to the game. This is true in sports. It is true in business. It is true in politics.
Sports is the easiest analogy.
A football game has boundaries.
You play the game inside the boundaries. It is agreed you can’t hit an opponent, gain yards or score points out-of-bounds.
You play the game for a certain time period. When the ball is hiked, a play starts. When the ref blows the whistle the play ends.
Most importantly, each player has the freedom to choose to be a player, or not be a player. But each team also has the freedom to choose who is on their team and who is not.
Thus a team is by mutual consent. Games between teams are by mutual consent.
The same in business. There are rules of the game. Rules of when you have to tell the truth and when you are allowed to stretch it.
As in sports, business requires a willing and able buyer and a willing and able seller coming to mutual agreement on a sale.
A business team and an individual player are free to come to a mutual agreement or choose to not come to an agreement and not have a team relationship.
This discussion could get quite long. But freedom to agree on a relationship and freedomm to not agree on a relaitonship and rules of the game enforced by a referee are the essential ingredients of competition.
For competition to not slouch into anarchy there need to be consistent rules to the game. This is true in sports. It is true in business. It is true in politics.
Sports is the easiest analogy.
A football game has boundaries.
You play the game inside the boundaries. It is agreed you can’t hit an opponent, gain yards or score points out-of-bounds.
You play the game for a certain time period. When the ball is hiked, a play starts. When the ref blows the whistle the play ends.
Most importantly, each player has the freedom to choose to be a player, or not be a player. But each team also has the freedom to choose who is on their team and who is not.
Thus a team is by mutual consent. Games between teams are by mutual consent.
The same in business. There are rules of the game. Rules of when you have to tell the truth and when you are allowed to stretch it.
As in sports, business requires a willing and able buyer and a willing and able seller coming to mutual agreement on a sale.
A business team and an individual player are free to come to a mutual agreement or choose to not come to an agreement and not have a team relationship.
This discussion could get quite long. But freedom to agree on a relationship and freedomm to not agree on a relaitonship and rules of the game enforced by a referee are the essential ingredients of competition.
I have a headache.
I’m going to Walmart for some Jack Daniels and refill my Xanax prescription.