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by leonidasrup 17 days ago
The "invisible hand of the free market" works only, if you have many market participants competing one against another. When a participant wins the competition you get monopoly, when multiple participants collude you get oligopoly, or cartel. Market can not solve this.

Historical examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

1 comments

If competition was economically efficient, it would happen. Monopolies prove that monopolies are efficient.
Efficient at generating the most value for shareholders? Probably. Efficient at price/performance of product sold? No.
Yes, which means that we can easily see that capitalism does not optimize for a better world or a more practical market or a better product, but instead optimizes for extracting the maximum wealth possible from the market and consolidating it as much as possible.