New to ancap ideology, curious to know more.
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Im glad you're not simply stating that monopolies could never exist with perfect competition, as even with extremely unregulated markets like crypto currency the market tends towards a pareto distribution where there are almost always a single high performer dominating the market.
With that said, if monopolies can form naturally without any assistance (by gov't, for example), how can a market naturally balance the scales in favor of competition? I say this in reference to Standard Oil, which bought off 90% of the oil business without government intervention, and then started using anti-free market pricing strategies to keep competitors from forming.
I think the drive for competition comes from a natural desire for choice, or at least the illusion of it. Also, geographic concerns tend to lead to some level of competition due to time factors. As humanity expands beyond the Earth's atmosphere, the distance and time required to organize a monopolizing cartel becomes more difficult. This is the same effect that led to the American Revolution, where the central authority was just too far away to be entirely efficient.
Thats a good point, most companies can offer the illusion of choice by diversifying their product lines along different price points or feature optimization.
Ive worked for a few global companies, and the level of control across regions is scary. Many global companies (like Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft) can afford to have offices in every major country, and many times multiple office locations in those same countries. Due to their flat corporate structure in tech companies, they are highly agile to shifting market conditions all across the world, and its scary to think if a company had a complete stranglehold on the global economy they could really shut down local competition.
More recently, its been government intervention thats been trying to hold back the growing influence of these tech companies (GDPR and the lawsuit against Google in the EU come to mind right away), but Im wondering if government is the only way to respond to a growing oligopoly or monopoly, or if theres an free market "event horizon" where a certain level of competition must exist in order to prevent a monopoly from forming.
Speaking of illusion of choice; I previously worked for AT&T and was privy to the fact that they actively work with other internet service providers to negotiate non-compete regions so they can all charge exorbitant prices for sub par services. This primarily happens in suburb and exurb communities. Why I don't believe that regulation is a net positive, to say that there are not specific situations where it has it's merits is equally mistaken. Still though, if having to chose between over-regulation and ancap, i'd take ancap any day. I'm tired of being told what I can and cannot do with the product of my own labor. I am not a slave.
I feel ya, my neighborhood only has comcast and I hate not having any choice or competition. But would you say that AT&T got those non-competes from government regulation or from bargaining with other private companies? I really dont know much about the ISP and cell coverage market.
Std Oil was a monopoly, but they also drove the price of oil down 90% and kept it there for over a century. They literally saved the whales. It is very difficult to maintain a free market monopoly without aggressive price discounting.
But even then Std Oil started to break. Before it was over, they were getting their ass kicked by the oil services industry. They wouldn't offer oil services to smaller competitors who were taking over Texas. The share holders revolted, and got the government to break up their monopoly, separating off their oil services industry. Another example of how on their own, monopolies tend to become bloated and unresponsive to the market.