Marc Horowitz says:
What is wrong with large organizations per se?
This is way off-topic, but....
Large organizations have too much power. Take a look at the sorts of things Andrew Carnegie was able to do. Like running at a loss in order to squash small competitors.
Never happened. Its a myth, plain and simple. "Predatory pricing" doesn't work -- any real business man can tell you that. Unfortunately, decades of propaganda tell us all sorts of garbage. Right now, some folks in Arkansas are suing Walmart for this very offense -- Wallmart's real crime, of course, is providing too much choice to the consumer at too low a price for the taste of their competitors. As for Andrew Carnegie's empire, U.S. Steel, which was formed by merging Carnegie's operations and all the other big steel producing operations in the U.S., controlled well over 95% of steel production in the U.S. when it was started -- and within a few years, was down to under 50%. Oh, and Standard Oil was dropping in market share as fast as a stone when it was broken up. Anyone REALLY believe Microsoft is a monopoly, please raise their hands. I hate MS-DOS, but no one is FORCED to use it -- its just, unfortunately, a standard.
That's where the Sherman antitrust legislature comes from.
Nah. The Sherman Antitrust Act and all its friends are based partially on myths, and partially on the desire of businessmen to get government ENFORCEMENT of cartels. The ICC, for instance, was created entirely to enforce cartel pricing on the railroads. Airlines scream loudly for regulation -- because they don't like the low prices competition has forced over the last decade. Most monopolies are things created by the government -- phone companies or utility companies being given exclusive franchises even though there is no real reason two or more sets of lines couldn't be run. I can name exactly one significant real monopoly -- that is, a monopoly that was not formed with the collusion of the government and that wasn't a trivial case like "only pizza parlor in the village" -- in U.S. history. The case in question was Alcoa, and the only reason they maintained an aluminum monopoly as long as they did was that they did everything they could to lower aluminum prices and maintained minimal profits -- had they tried jacking up profits, other companies would have appeared instantly.
Before you call me a government-lover, I have to say that I'm not sure which I find more abhorrent: "capitalist" companies engaging in unfair business practices, or government regulation. If someone wants to explain how we can get away without both (in personal email :-) I'd love to hear it.
Monopolies, cartels, etc, are all a myth. The longest any of J.P. Morgan's railroad cartels lasted was a matter of months (until he got the Interstate Commerce Commission created to get government to enforce his cartels for him -- but thats another story). Cartesls and monopolies are naturally unstable entities. OPEC was able to control prices for only a couple of years before things crashed -- oil now is near the same price it was in 1973 measured in real dollars (and OPEC has NO regulation of its activities at all.) Perry