Monopoly

 


 

[1944]  F. A. Hayek,  The Road to Serfdom, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1986

-  "It should be noted that monopoly is frequently the product of factors other than the lower costs of greater size. It is attained through collusive agreement and promoted by public policies." (p. 33 - from monograph n. 21, 1940)

-  In Germany "the growth of cartels and syndicates has since 1878 been systematically fostered by deliberate policy." (p. 34)
-  "That in the United States a highly protectionist policy made a somewhat similar development [of monopolies] possible, seemed to confirm this generalisation." (p. 34)

-  "Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rest on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable." (p. 69)

-  "Private monopoly is scarcely ever complete and even more rarely of long duration or able to disregard potential competition. But a state monopoly is always a state-protected monopoly - protected against both potential competition and effective criticism." (p. 146)

-  "The fatal turning point in the modern development was when the great movement which can serve its original ends only by fighting all privilege, the Labour Movement, came under the influence of anti-competition doctrines and became itself entangled in the strife for privilege. The recent growth of monopoly is largely the result of a deliberate collaboration of organised capital and organised labour where the privileged groups of labour share in the monopoly profits at the expense of the community and in particularly at the expense of the poorest, those employed in the less well organised industries and the unemployed." (p. 148)

 

[1948]  Wilhelm Röpke,  Civitas Humana. A human order of society, William Hodge & Company, London, 1948

-  "Very possibly there would be few monopolies in the world today were it not the state for a variety of reasons had exerted the whole weight of its authority, its laws and of its conscious or unconscious economic policy in favour of monopoly and against the natural gravitation to competition." (p. 170)

 

[1962]  Milton Friedman with the assistance of Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982

-  "I am inclined to urge that the least of the evils is private unregulated monopoly wherever this is tolerable. Dynamic changes are highly likely to undermine it and there is at least some chance that these will be allowed to have their effect." (p. 128)

-  "Probably the most important source of monopoly power has been government assistance, direct and indirect." "Perhaps the three clearest examples are tariffs, tax legislation, and law enforcement and legislation with respect to labor disputes." "Tariffs have of course been imposed largely to 'protect' domestic industries, which means to impose handicaps on potential competitors. They always interfere with the freedom of individuals to engage in voluntary exchange. After all, the liberal takes the individual, not the nation or citizen of a particular nation, as his unit. Hence he regards it just as much a violation of freedom if citizens of the United States and Switzerland are prevented from consummating an exchange that would be mutually advantageous as if two citizens of the United States are prevented from doing so." "Clearly ... tariffs do foster monopoly. It is far easier for a few firms than for many to collude to fix prices, and it is generally easier for enterprises in the same country to collude than for enterprises in different countries." (p. 129)

 

[1965]  Estes Kefauver,  In a Few Hands. Monopoly power in America, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966

-  "[Thus] it is not surprising that the records of the regulatory agencies have sometimes been disappointing. Instead of developing policies making the industry more responsive to public needs, they too often spend their energies protecting fixed investments, freezing obsolete modes of doing business, excluding new entrants from the industry, and perpetuating the existence of high-cost operators. In a word, the regulated take over the regulators, and for all practical purposes, monopoly comes to be elevated to the position of high public policy." " The classic example is the case of the railroads. In recent decades they have been subject to intensive competition both in the passenger and freight fields, and the efforts of the regulatory agency have been primarily directed to softening the impact of this competition. To this end a host of restrictions have been imposed upon the trucking industry. Professor Walter Adams remarked that the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) 'does not protect the public against the industry but protects the industry against the bargaining power of the public.' He suggested that the Commission 'deregulate such industries as trucking, where competition can do more to protect the public interest than a monopoly-minded commission'." (p. 226)

-  "Dr. Edwin G. Nourse, the Council of Economic Advisor's first chairman in 1946, was concerned with government practice in this area [monopolies and antitrust] : 'Consistent antitrust action, like charity, should begin at home. There is glaring inconsistency when a government pledged to free-competitive enterprise, harbors within itself a great variety of structures and programs which grant immunities or extend disproportional privileges to special classes or groups. And yet the roster of such discrepancies in our economy is long. It runs from our ancient but now somewhat moderated) system of protective tariffs to the modern (and growing) array of import quotas and export subsidies. It runs from a patent system originated in the eighteenth century to today's marketing controls and the power exercised by the Atomic Energy Commission and Civil Aeronautics Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Power Commission in their respective fields of technology. These limitations on industrial competition are implemented by bureaucratic control over the awarding of money and massive Government contracts'." (pp. 238-239)

-  "Professor Fritz Machlup of Johns Hopkins University said : 'It happens that our Government has done much more to create monopoly than to destroy monopoly. I need refer only to the tariff laws, to the corporation laws, to the patent laws, to the large number of franchises and licensing laws in the States and in municipalities. There are features in our tax law which foster concentration. We have been doing much more to create monopoly than to destroy or reduce monopoly. We are still going on doing it, day after day'. In fact, he suggested, 'we go ahead and eliminate a little monopoly here, or a little there, but on the other hand we create monopolistic restraints all the time through restricting imports, through raising tariffs, through reducing quotas, through enforcing support prices, through making it more difficult for newcomers to enter industries'. To this current state of affairs, Professor Gray applied the term 'the new mercantilism of the late twentieth century'." (p. 239)

-  "Purely private monopoly has, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist except in the backwashes of our society; all monopolies of major significance today rest squarely on some special privilege granted by government." (p. 240)

-  "... the greatest single concentration of economic power over the competitive process rests in the hand of the Federal Government." (p. 240)

-  "It is too much to expect a couple of small antitrust agencies ... to carry on the gigantic task of maintaining a competitive system in our economy. And how this can be accomplished when, against a small guerilla corps of enforcement officials, there is arrayed virtually the whole massive machinery of Government?" (p. 240)

-  "The current handling of Government funds for research provides serious hazards to the maintenance of a competitive economy." "In 1959, 100 large corporations received about 80%. Yet these same firms accounted for only 41% of total sales within their respective industrial categories. In a word, though these companies are today dominant in their fields, there is every promise that they will be more dominant tomorrow." (pp. 244-245)

-  "Can we afford to take a public stand on the need for preserving a free competitive system, and yet use the enormous powers of the Government establishment to chip away at its very foundations." (p. 246)

 

[1965]  E.G.West,  Education and the State. A study in political economy, Third Edition, Revised and Expanded,  Liberty Press, Indianapolis, 1994

-  "Through the mechanism of taxation the state is able to make its own position almost unassailable whenever it wishes to invade an area of private provision [e.g. schooling]. For one thing tax revenues necessary to finance the new government establishments dry up the source of funds that would otherwise have been used in the private sector. For another, by charging fees which are lower than those of private establishments it can compete them out of existence, just as a monopolist, in seeking market aggrandisement, can use 'fighting' companies to sell below cost and kill competitors in one area after another." (p. 88)

 

[1980]  Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman,  Free to Choose, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1983

-  "A monopoly can seldom be established within a country without overt and covert government assistance in the form of a tariff or some other device." (p. 76)

 

[1999]  Martin van Creveld,  The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999

-  "The conduct of international business was monopolised by the state, which either created its own organs for the purpose or else operated through an elaborate licensing system." (p. 237)