[governance] reality check on economics

[Louis Pouzin (well)]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 3:14 AM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:

>
> On 18 May 2012, at 12:51, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
> > But if these markets are competitive then no one is requiring consumers
> to use those online businesses, no? So we are back to the problem of
> monopoly
>
> Certainly in many of the American and European countries people have a
> choice (i hate thinking of people as consumers - as it signifies that their
> role as part of so called market is their only relevance).  But i have been
> given to understand, and my knowledge is second hand because I have not
> researched it myself, that in many areas in Asia and Africa, and perhaps
> some in the Americas and Europe, large parts of the population are captive
> of one company or another, i.e some of these companies get local monopoly,
> for some definition of local.
>
> The question i have then, beyond the regional/local problem of countries
> etc that allow such local capture, is there a global way to help with this.
>  I think there may be, and thus it is worth discussing.  Except for a very
> few companies, and these rather incompletely, most companies do not make
> social ethics a high priority and thus will take market power whenever they
> can, by whatever means they can get it.  Unfortunately, it is only
> regulatory frameworks that stop most companies from this sort of behavior.
>  So what can be done at a global level to keep local/regional monopolies
> from happening.
>
> avri
> - - -
>

See what happened to Standard Oil, ITT, AT&T.
But now giant american companies are sacred cows.
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