Monopoly and Competition

Recorded at Mises University 2004.

The standard tale of labor history in American is largely false. Unions did not cause a rising standard of living. Employers were forbidden to encourage union membership, but they could compel union membership.

Up until the 1930s there was freedom of contract between workers and employers by which they could make, accept, or reject any offers of remuneration. With the 1930s comes the idea of exclusive bargaining agents decided upon by a majority of workers, and compulsory to all.

Dues to threats of copyright infringement lawsuits, this bakery now re

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.