I'm not as familiar with the history of the communications market as you are.. but i like how you see the fruits of markets... I think as we are all traders or involved in the industry we can clearly see the benefit of markets..your argument seems to have some validity but I just don't see how some leverage such an argument to socialize so much of our free market... Mostly government doesnt do better then the free market...by mostly I mean 95% .. I don't like the current sentiment of socialization of healthcare, banks, etc etc...I need to read more into the things your talking about.. this monopoly argument goes way back.. mostly it has been used as a anti capitalist argument
https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly I like this.. its not to long and it talks about "capture" as you mentioned
Thanks, interesting read. I think there is some conflation there between parts of an industry that are pretty important to clear up. I'll speak to electric utilities because that's my world. There is a natural monopoly in power distribution lines to the home and the operation of the distribution grid. It's not only not practical to have 5 lines going to every home, but the reliability requirements of a power grid are complex and enormously challenging with one central independent system operator, let alone multiple. There is a multi-year lead time to build transmission and generation, and a system for ensuring that excess capacity is available for the few hours of peak load is a non-trivial problem that can't be easily solved without a regulatory framework. That said, in places like PJM and ISO-NE market mechanisms like auctions are used to award multi-year capacity payments to ensure the correct amount of capacity is built, however this wouldn't work if you had multiple independent system operators and a regulatory framework that the free market operated in. I could go on for hours, but suffice it to say that the fact that your A/C goes on every time you flip the switch except for a few hours a year during storms is far more exceptional than one may think. On the flip side, the generation side of electricity is certainly not a natural monopoly, although about half the states in the U.S., ironically mostly red states, have not deregulated generation. The article, although apparently written before widespread deregulation and giving a brief nod to it, doesn't seem to grasp this distinction. This is where I operate; there is no reason that generation should be an almost completely free market operation and in the places where it is it works very well. I say almost completely free market, because Enron was able to selectively shut down plants and game the location marginal pricing model as well as causing completely unnecessary blackouts in CA due to their initial poorly implemented deregulation. Setting up markets that work in electricity is far harder than something easy like stocks or pork bellies, but it can be done and it's even fun if you're a geek who's into things like that. Anyway, interesting discussion, thanks.
felixbocharov said: Anyhow, every poll shows a great margins in favour of HC, I don't see how Trump can win now. I do blame our education system
Like every advanced STEM concept, statistics can seem meaningless if you know little about it. Take a couple statistics classes, there are plenty of great MOOCs that are free. Then you can productively contribute to conversations that require a basic understanding of statistics. Until then, however, I'd recommend refraining from pontificating on something you appear to know so little about, just like I refrain from pontificating on things like the best way to conduct brain surgery.
Your liberal brain doesn't allow you to believe there is a possibility you are wrong. Your beliefs are unfounded and biased.
I am self taught, i started my education reading stuff on fat tails, taleb, and derman stuff.. I am a part of a community called R-Finance.. I'm sure your familar with it, R programming.. I've only taken stats 1 in college.. I kind of think its my saving grace i learned stats on my own through a didactic way. I've read a bunch of books on the matter.. The devil is always in the details.. when you have your own money up its a different animal all together.. I don't pretend to be extremely knowledgable on the matter, i tend to believe i don't know what i am doing, and i look to see what might go wrong .. i am truely a skeptic.. only through this i ended up reading philosophy and political science. I've read alot of collectivist text.. only the austrians ever really hit a note with me.. The rest of it is so lost in pure math quant world its literally blow up central.. Econometrics is typically where gaussian distros meet the dynamic fat tailed market.. smoothing distros etc.. Mostly what i've learned from economic philosphy is the less is more.. leave it alone! let it be! lassie faire
liberalism was stolen by the collectivists.. the book "liberalism" by Von Mises expounds on it .. https://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition