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X goes offline in Brazil after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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Technology
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I agree with that.
I obviously don't agree with that. Monopolies depend on the government to exist. I will not elaborate further because I'm not feeling like arguing with strangers on the internet today
I really don't know what that means
I won't bother with the rest, but this is flat-out false. Unregulated capitalism is responsible for unethical practices such as buying out your competitors, price-fixing, waiting-out your competitors (because they can't match your unrealistically low price), insider-trading, exploiting a captive audience, and only competing in "territories" (you know, like drug dealers).
I can't speak globally, but all the worst monopolies engaged in at least one of these. The US is far from perfect, but they squashed several giant monopolies because of practices like this. Corporations without guardrails are unrestrained greed.
a monopoly patent was literally a government invention. an actual monopoly does require the government. what you are talking about is called a "natural monopoly" in the literature. that would be a situation where there's only one seller for something like say water in a desert town. in that case you can have price gouging and such.
now, the important bit is the LEGAL ability to prevent competition. if there is a natural monopoly on water, and the seller decided to start charging obscene amounts for water, those extreme profits would normally induce other sellers to enter the market. except when they are legally prohibited, we can expect that a natural monopoly will not last if what we call "monopoly rents" are extracted.
so you see, a true monopoly requires legal force, eg the state.
They're not talking about natural monopolies. A natural monopoly is when there's some barrier to entry that prevents competitors from entering the market, like a need for prohibitively expensive infrastructure.
What OP is talking about are situations like Walmart opening a store in a new location, operating it at or near a loss to drive the local competition out of business, and then jacking up prices once no competitors remain. The government isn't forcing them to do that.
I very much disagree but respect a desire to not get into a debate, so I'll leave it there.
"Your freedom ends at my face" is a saying used often here to contend with right-wing group's insistence on "freedom," often the kind that involves harming others; e.g. free speech absolutism and the "freedom" to spout neo-Nazi rhetoric that advocates for the murder of minorities, or the "freedom" to not get vaccinated and thus worsen a pandemic. A more full version might be "Your freedom to throw a punch ends where my face begins." The idea is that it is fair to restrict a freedom if it supports the freedom of others — you might not trust governments to determine where those lines lie, and that's fair, but that's a separate issue.