Talk:Coercive monopoly/references

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Statistics
A brief survey of academic references to "coercive monopoly": some of which duplicate each other and all of which use the term in the political sense of "monopoly on the use of coercion".
 * 2 hits on swetswise.com
 * 2 on sciencedirect.com
 * 7 on ingentaconnect.com
 * Google Scholar's 64 hits are mostly in the political sense as well.

Alan Greenspan, "Antitrust"
The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry -- the barring of all competing producers from a given field. This can be accomplished only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or franchises.

[...]

The churning of a nation's capital, in a fully free economy, would be continuously pushing capital into profitable areas -- and this would effectively control the competitive price and production policies of business firms, making a coercive monopoly impossible to maintain. It is only in a so-called mixed economy that a coercive monopoly can flourish, protected from the discipline of the capital markets by franchises, subsidies, and special privileges from governmental regulators.

Lawrence Kudlow, "The judicial hacker"
In Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's latest legal assault on Microsoft, he still refuses to acknowledge that the world's leading software company has for many years been cutting product prices to consumers while at the same time increasing the production of its application and operating systems used by businesses and individuals.

As such, Microsoft fails to meet the traditional standards of a coercive monopoly, i.e., one that price-gouges consumers by deliberately curtailing production. If there was a reason to justify trust-busting a hundred years ago under the Sherman anti-trust act, this was it. But today's Microsoft case is a completely different story.

Murray Rothbard, "The ethics of liberty"
Suppose, for example, that there are many competing cantaloupe stores in a particular neighborhood. One of the cantaloupe dealers, Smith, then uses violence to drive all of his competitors out of the neighborhood; he has thereby employed violence to establish a coerced monopoly over the sale of cantaloupes in a given territorial area. Does that mean that Smith’s use of violence to establish and maintain his monopoly was essential to the provision of cantaloupes in the neighborhood? Certainly not, for there were existing competitors as well as potential rivals should Smith ever relax his use and threat of violence; moreover, economics demonstrates that Smith, as a coercive monopolist will tend to perform his service badly and inefficiently. Protected from competition by the use of force, Smith can afford to provide his service in a costly and inefficient manner, since the consumers are deprived of any possible range of alternative choice.

Edward W. Younkins, "Antitrust laws should be abolished"
In essence, there are two types of monopoly – efficiency and coercive. An efficiency monopoly earns a high market share because it does good work. Such a monopoly has no legal power to force people to do business with it. On the other hand a coercive monopoly results from a state grant of exclusive privilege. The government may: ban competition, grant privileges, immunities, or subsidies to one company; or impose costly requirements on others. What really bothers individuals about monopoly is not that one firm has economic dominance over a product or service, but that compulsion, force, or special privilege is used to prevent other firms from entering the market. There is no social harm in a monopoly if others have an equal right to enter the field of business. There is a large difference between monopoly in the sense of being the sole firm in a market, and in the exploitative sense of using state help or force to keep competitors out. The real robber barons are firms that look to privileges. Only a coercive monopoly hurts people because force, rather than ability, is used to keep others out of the market. The only way that a firm can gain a monopoly without having to fear the threat of competition is through the force of the government.

Edward W. Younkins, "Antitrust laws harm consumers and stifle competition"
The purported goal of antitrust laws is to protect competition based on the idea that a free unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. However, a coercive monopoly cannot be established in a free economy – the necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry that can only be achieved by an act of government intervention in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or franchises. There is no invulnerable monopoly unless it is protected by the state.

Nathaniel Branden, "The Question of Monopolies"
It is imperative that one be clear and specific in one’s understanding of the meaning of “monopoly.” When people speak in an economic or political context, of the dangers and evils of monopoly, what they mean is a coercive monopoly—that is; exclusive control of a given field of production which is closed to and exempt from competition, so that those controlling the field are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices, independent of the market, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a monopoly, it is important to note, entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of competition. That is a coercive monopoly’s characteristic attribute-and is essential to any condemnation of such a monopoly.

In the whole history of capitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition on a free market. There is only one way to forbid entry into a given field of production: by law. Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existed—in the United States, in Europe or anywhere else in the world—was created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses, subsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not obtainable on a free market) to a man or a group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field.

A coercive monopoly is not the result of laissez-faire; it can result only from the abrogation of laissez-faire and from the introduction of the opposite principle—the principle of statism.

[...]

In the issue of monopolies, as in so many other issues, capitalism is commonly blamed for the evils perpetrated by its destroyers: it is not free trade on a free market that creates coercive monopolies, but government legislation, government action, government controls. If men are concerned about the evils of monopolies, let them identify the actual villain in the picture and the actual cause of the evils: government intervention into the economy. Let them recognize that there is only one way to destroy monopolies: by the separation of State and Economics—that is, by instituting the principle that the government may not abridge the freedom of production and trade.