Message from @sɪᴅɪsɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀᴇ
Discord ID: 531239110208127006
Natural monopolies , when they exist they’re efficient
You can't deny that
How?
he didn’t want to raise prices due to fears of competitor.
Competition
Monopoly = No competition
When a competitor arises, they can crush them
Because they wouldn’t be able to raise prices as competition would come in, wouldn’t be able to give back quality etc
Yes but they would be efficient
They also have a large money supply
Standard Oil was pretty efficient, but that was only because oil had yet to gain traction in the economy and so he had to lower prices to make it a viable fuel
Economies of scale
And he had to lower prices to stop competition
Which helped the consumer
Monopolies barely exist in a free market
He did get into price wars, in which he lowered prices to drive competitors out of business
And a bad monopoly does not exist
yes and he kept prices down
But he would raise prices once they were done
No evidence to support that
There was an overall lowering trend as crude oil itself got cheaper
Not really
Standard oil did not control the oil extraction business anyways
All the aforementioned tactics basically dissuaded all but the most local competition
yes really
Yes he didn’t raise prices due to him fearing competition
They were more horizontally integrated than vertically integrated, yes
It would have been like that for ever
He often did raise prices
That’s why prices fell
He only lowered it when there was serious competition, a new market to expand into, or an internal cost savings
Monopoly prices in kerosene and other products made by Standard Oil would have simply been replaced with substitute goods which Standard Oil did not control.
Look at the monopoly De Beers had
They artificially sky rocketed diamond prices
No idea about de beers
So I’ll look into that
They're a diamond company who had a monopoly
And btw when in the year of the Supreme Court decision
Standard oil had 150 competitors