Monopoly and Competition

There's no Platonic laboratory where "pure" science happens independent of human ideas, motivations, and institutions.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 24 July 2015.

Includes an introduction by Jeff Deist. Recorded via Skype at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 23 July 2015.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 21 July 2015.

Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on 21 July 2015.

Many claim that great advances in technology come primarily through government spending on research. In fact, government tech spending crowds out other innovations while favoring certain interest groups at everyone else's expense.

In the wake of the Amtrak railway disaster, we’re likely to hear that the solution to the problem is more tax funding and regulation. Few will suggest privatizing the railways. But the historical record suggests that privatization does indeed make for safer railroads.

Antitrust law is still heavily reliant on notions of perfect competition and other static models of how markets should work. In truth, the dynamism of the marketplace does all that is necessary to prevent the rise of monopolies.

The story of intervention is as old as governments and commerce, and even though the details change, the basic narrative stays the same.

Largely forgotten in the English-speaking world today, French laissez-faire economist Michel Chevalier was an early opponent of patents, which he dismissed as a type of monopoly and an obstacle to technological and intellectual progress.