Actually, you only need two words: paper pushing. Great explanation, it gets very intricate due to the brainwashed sheep that keep believing into the scam and keep evolving it.
Of course, I never said a monopoly is efficient nor even smart (as if it takes any brains to run a monopoly). But it is government regulations & concerns which would prevent the obvious moves to eliminate competitors. When you are a big company like Xerox & IBM, your movement is limited. Add in the bureaucracy with some incompetence mixed in and you have leading market share companies becoming just another one of the herd. Compare to Microsoft, which was run and controlled almost exclusively by Bill Gates with an egotistical greed consumed methodology. Very efficient & effective from a capitalism perspective. By the time the government even woke up to this phenomenon called Microsoft, it was already too late. B. Gates' tactics are worthy of studying, after all, Microsoft did really innovate or create ANYTHING worthy. Railroad companies that were created by a break up of a monopoly, otherwise you would have seen the aviation industry controlled by the same entity. Plus, they have a point, airlines continue to be a financial mess in need of endless bailouts by the government. Spain still is richer than most nations due to their gold while Britain is a fraction of what they used to be. Currency devauled by over 75% and has yet to recover decades later. This is PURE nonsense, I am sorry. In the histories of monopolies and oligopolies, only government intervention was able to change the game. I continue to refer back to Russia of 1990s, purely monopolistic markets. Same for USA in early 1990s, all major key industries were monopolized. Without extensive government restrictions, the worthy contenders either get bought out or brought down, easily done without blatant coercion or fraud. I will point to the case of AT&T, the real trick was not their size & market share but the fact that they would "lose" the calls by the other carriers. Without government regulating these aspects of business, the smaller contenders simply have no chance. After all, as a capitalist in a laissez faire environment, I have no duty cooperate with my competitors. No morals in capitalism, they go against the profit & growth motives. Not much academic economics in my rationale, most of it is derived from history. The history behind capitalism, free markets, mercantilism, monopolies & oligopolies goes back to 15th century, if not earlier. Any hypothetical ideal world scenarios you can think of have probably already been proven wrong through real life events.
Doh, I meant DID NOT create anything. Doh again, meant early 1890s-1910s. I was smoking some quality sh*t, in case you can't tell.
A trader´s argument to the Austrian theory of the business cycle. How do I take advantage of this knowledge to make me some money? Any ideas?
eusdaiki, I did a search on Mises.org using Austrian traders. There are several entries that come up that might interest you. This one was the first. http://www.mises.org/story/1767
-buy a lot of gold. like 100% of the time regarless of supply and demand figures. -never buy any fiat currency because they are made by immoral fascists who just wish to inflate and confiscate your wealth, they all be worth zero anyway -remember to remain flexible, your bearish on the economy 100% of the time but your not sure if it will be a bust, crash or the armageddon so be willing to admit your wrong, change your perspective and your trades(as a long your still short) -seriously, buy some gold
Hahaha Personally I often enjoy making money watching how the fascists push things out of order playing on collective emotions and take the opposite side.
Thanks for the reply Nevadan. I'll do some more reading around that article as it seems quite interesting. I've been thinking about buying gold. But I wont do it blindly... as I would probably employ some technical analysis to get the most gold out of my worthless paper.
Best of luck in your purchase. Hopefully this won't be perceived as presumptuous but if I could point out something it would be that your paper is not worthless, it is just worth less over time as the result of inflation. So if you buy gold as a hedge you will probably do well if your analysis is sound. Paper dollars are not worthless even if they are not backed by anything, they are money for two reasons. The government says they are, and people accept them as such. Outside of a currency collapse there really isn't much reason for that to change. At some point if you want to spend your gold you will have to find someone who will take that as payment or convert it back into paper. Depending on the form that the gold is in can have some consequences as well. If it is in the form of coins it will be easier to convert than bullion, which may require an assay before a buyer will accept it in return for dollars. Gold may hold value better than dollars but it has some liquidity issues that should be considered as well.