From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Aug 13 2001 - 20:24:20 MDT
Francois-Rene Rideau on Sunday, June 17, 2001 3:17 PM (thread "free markets") wrote
> Your standard socialist advocacy is unsupported both by facts and by logic.
> H. Lepage, for instance, in "La Nouvelle Economie Industrielle", 1989, (a
> great book that I recommend to any French speaker), completely demolishes
> the fallacy of alleged "natural monopolies"... He shows that historically,
> so-called "natural monopolies" were actually quite competitive markets,
> with prices dropping and historical "monopolies" shrinking, until these
> were given de jure monopoly by governments, after lobbying by these
> monopolies to exclude the competition.
> There is no evidence whatsoever of such dump followed by price rise
> that [someone said] de facto monopolies allow. [Book not online, but
> lots of stuff on Lepage's site euro92.org]
>
> I'm amazed how socialists advocate a de jure monopoly as a way to
> fight alleged de facto monopoly. "Oh, a monopoly is bad. There
> seems to be one here. To fight its ill effects, let's vote a law
> that'll make it compulsory for such a monopoly to exist,
> 'til the end of time."
Where can I find out more about why "natural monopolies" do not exist,
if that's indeed true? Should "natural monopoly" be added to J. R.
Molloy's list of useless hypotheses?
Lee Corbin
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