Monopoly and Competition

Recorded at Mises University 2004.

Prior to Mises there had been nothing written on the theory of monopoly price. Mises felt there could be some limited times of monopoly on the free market, e.g. diamond mines, but Rothbard felt that there could not be monopolies. Both theories developed out of Menger’s original thoughts.

Presented as part of the Mises Institute’s Brown Bag Seminar series on May 26, 2005 in Auburn, Alabama.

Opponents of employment-at-will speak of defending an employee's "individual freedom." Arthur Foulkes argues that this isn't freedom at all.

On the face of it, who can object to the Supreme Court's decision that permits wine consumers to buy directly from out-of-state wineries? This is just the free market at work. The state laws that prohibited the practice were nothing but a legal leftover from prohibition days and a mercantilist privilege granted to politically powerful distributors who thought only of their monopoly.

In March of 2004 Microsoft was fined a record $648 million by the European Commission for exercising its (alleged) monopoly power in the operating systems market.

Recorded at the 2005 Austrian Scholars Conference, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.

Recorded at the 2005 Austrian Scholars Conference, Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.  

In its current form Freddie Mac is a mercantilist company, and as such, it is not a good example of free enterprise, write Paul Cleveland and Michael Tucker.

The term Austrian will include people like Shumpeter and Morgenstern. Competition is seen as a state of affairs of perfect knowledge and equilibrium by mainstream economists. This fails to provide explanations as to how those market prices have been achieved.