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Originally Posted by Ethersync
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AT&T would be a bit late, but let's go with it.
I don't see how this proves a myth of AT&T not being a monopoly... the fact that AT&T even happened is proof of a monopoly forming. It was the result of multiple corps evolving and combining and buying up others. Even before the patent expired, it had influence over the market, it had already restricted the market in many areas, it was the single provider for long distance, it was a monopoly simply by it's formation it grained the power to have this influence.
That was a great pdf, I really did enjoy it. Now, I do like how it jumps around, takes out little cuts for bits of history, to make it's points true. I also enjoyed the theories in it as well, like how they define market dominance as temporary assuming a gov doesn't grant a monopoly, however it fails to factor in a corporation already had enough power to lobby the state and local gov's so it could restrict the market, more. It wasn't like it wasn't trying in areas succeeding before hand in other ways, it just went up the scale as it grew, it didn't like competition, it had the power to stop it, so they did.
It started with greed first, and went up the chain to make it worse. All the gov did was make it worse in this case, which I never argued... I've said it works both ways, sometimes it's good and others it's bad. It's not a one way door, it's not "always bad" - market regs/restrictions, etc are sometimes needed.
That's why I say the Austrian mind set is flawed... they wont accept anything outside of what they define as to be true, which is exactly what they bitch about in other economic theories, yet do themselves, just in different ways.