What about Microsoft? There's plenty of oligopolies, monopolies, it's coming. Take a look at the handful of companies that control the mainstream media, or the big international oil firms, or the "new" AT&T whose goal apparently is to look a lot like the old AT&T, or take a look at the superbanks. Hard to believe but even 10 years ago there used to be a lot more independent financial institutions. The fact is almost every industry is having massive consolidation. The government intervenes to breakup monopolities? Show us some examples of that. Also take a look at this article from the brains at Mises institute, it's about the tulip mania. http://www.mises.org/story/2564#0 They're arguing that it wasn't a mania at all! That the high prices reflected demand. These people are so deep in the bullshit they confuse even themselves about the most basic concepts or definitions. Now I hear that natural monopolies can exist but not normal monopolies? If you have Coca Cola and Pepsi with 95% of the market share for sodas, is that a natural monopoly? After all, the barrier to entry is very high as you need billions in advertising to compete against these brands. Isn't that a fixed sunken cost? You also need to fight retailers and offer them a lot of money because they can extract high profits from popular brands. Another fixed cost. Or is it a normal monopoly? The 2 companies control the whole market after all. I don't think there's a clear line between natural and normal monopoly, any number of conditions about the business environment could fall in either definition. The thread was resolved on page 5 or so, scriabinop did an admirable job. But the austrian economists could win any argument from the safety of their ivory tower. Like someone in this thread said, austrian economics is a philosophy, try to disprove a philosophy, it's pretty damn hard. Leave them writing their silly stories and sell their DVDs, they will only become more and more irrelevant and wither away, there's no other way.
I think people were a little confused about what I said about natural monopolies. The main point is that these are monopolies on services that would NOT be provided in a market environment other than monopoly. Competition makes these services unviable. Soda is not a good example of this.