LibertyPen
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 4 months, 2012–2025
4:18 · 282K views · Jan 29, 2010
A short clip of Milton Friedman explaining his free-market view of monopoly, namely that monopolies persist mainly through government help. It is excerpted from the Milton Friedman Speaks series.
HN cites it in antitrust and regulation threads as Friedman's take on monopolies, sometimes approvingly and sometimes with skepticism.
5 comments from Hacker News
They are a quasi monopoly. Ok, and? The idea that monopoly is bad - ipso facto - is silly and monopolistic abuse of consumers is largely theoretical. Governments don't like monopolies because they challenge their power, and don't forget nearly every "bad" monopoly was the result of a government license to monopolize. The whole "Trust Busting" trope that underlies the anti-trust act was not because consumers were being hurt, it was a pissing match between the Government and Northern Securities Company [1]. Milton Friedman covered this well [2] Who's creating those desires? Companies, friends, acquaintances, media etc... it's not Google. Or is this just the ad-industry stealing the attention... Sure, are we debating the existence of an ad-market or Google? Cause I can assure you an ad market will exist irrespective of whatever Google does. [1] [LINK] [2] this video
The observation that the least regulated markets are typically the most competitive ones and that large companies rarely tend to maintain their lead over long periods of time. And at least one Nobel Prize-winning economist agrees with me: this video
Milton Friedman famously claimed monopolies/cartels would not exist without government assistance and that there are only 2 examples of private monopolies that lasted long period of time (De Beers and NYSE). I suppose he was very wrong. this video
Historically, this hasn't happened a lot without the help of government. See this video and [LINK] . The only one in tech that I can think of at the moment would possibly be Facebook and even then, there are tons of competing social networks.
Milton Friedman famously claimed monopolies/cartels would not exist without government assistance and that there are only 2 examples of private monopolies that lasted longer period of time. I suppose he was very wrong. this video