[ZenoArrow]

Doesn't work if the incumbent companies are selling natural resources and have access to all resources in question.

To illustrate, imagine we were in a free market and I wanted to start an oil company to disrupt the prices of an oil cartel. How am I going to do that if I don't have any oil?

[saltedshiv]

I'll counter that illustration. Let's assume that there is no oil left that doesn't have claim by an oil company and therefore you are unable to compete directly in the oil manufacturing business. But, what you are really saying is that you think that the price for what utilization oil brings is too high, and thus you can compete with oil with another resource. This means that you could invest in whale oil, coal, solar, wind, natural gas, or nuclear, or something else. If the price of oil is too high, then there is large amounts of incentive to invest in something that might not even exist.

By offering those resources to the same spaces that utilize oil, you are competing with oil. If you are able to take customers from oil, oil will be forced to reduce their prices.

As I mentioned in the previous comment, you should check out the keywords I mentioned. And if you are thinking that I'm missing something, please direct some resources my way.

[ZenoArrow]

You have to have an option that is better than oil, otherwise it wouldn't work. Imagine if car fuel prices were being kept artificially high, how are you going to compete? If you invest in something new, it has to be better than oil. We're lucky in this case that electric cars have numerous benefits, but suppose for a second that they didn't exist. It's possible to run a car on natural gas, coal, etc... but there are hugh costs to competing... investment in new vehicles and investment in service stations and fuel transport being some of the biggest costs. And who's to stop the oil cartel waiting for you to launch, lowering their prices to undercut you, waiting for the competition to fail, then jacking prices back up again?