Question to Libertarians

Assume the state has no control over the market. What happens with monopolies? What if a giant company controls the entire water supply or electricity supply and raises the prices to an insanely high amount?

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Once the prices get high enough, a small company can undercut the big one's prices. (Unless regulations stop it from doing so).

Monopolies can't exist without government.

a competitor can offer the same service for closer to what it actually costs to eat into the monopolists market share

monopolies are usually enabled by the state, dummy

How so?

You do realize that the largest monopolies today are state supported?

by entrenching their position, think central banking, power grid, education, healthcare, pensions, state broadcaster and a host of similar ponzies

Assuming a company controlled those supplies in such a complete and utter way as to not allow smaller competitors to enter the market all? AND assuming they were so retarded as to raise prices to a "insanely high amount"....Violent revolution against that company. DUH.

That sort of action I would consider a genuine for of oppression, and aggression should then be a viable alternative.

>Assume the state has no control over the market. What happens with monopolies?

they begin to fuck us for profit which is in their nature. Thats why Im not an anarchist and anarchist of any variety are fucking retards. A liberal free market capitalist economy is probably the best system, but lets not pretend its perfect and without fault. Big Businesses would literally enslave you and pay you in bowls of rice if they legally could and it would make them money.

People, especially nufags who LARP as ancaps despite being unemployed NEETS, need to realize corporations are apolitical souless machines with one purpose, to make as much money as possible. Thats it. Its the coldest, most cynicle entity in existence. They dont care about religion or race or nationalist or the environment, they exist soley to make money. They also have really narrow minded tunnel vision. these things would blow up the earth if it made them in more money in a 3 year period. Its this almost suicidal autistic desire to just make more and more profit. To actually suggest we hold NO regulations on these things is completely retarded.

>Monopolies can't exist without the government.
Not true, technically.

From my econ textbook, these are the 4 ways monopolies can arise:
>1. Government enforcement (patent, copyright, public franchise, etc.)
As you mentioned.

>2. One firm has control of a key resource necessary to produce a good
As in the example posed by OP

>3. There are important network externalities in supplying the good or service
A network externality, if you don't know, is the characteristic of a product in which its usefulness increases with the number of consumers who use it.
This is why, for example, so few MMOs can compete with World of Warcraft. Any MMO is only fun when you have a large amount of people playing together, so to start a new one is really hard, because it's not as fun when you know only a few people are playing it. Because of that externality, people prefer existing MMOs like WoW over new ones.

> 4. Economies of scale are so large that one firm has a natural monopoly
As best I can simplify it: there's only "room" in the market for one firm. This usually happens to utility markets like electricity, running water, etc. where fixed costs (e.g. equipment and installation) are fucking huge compared to the variable costs (e.g. maintenance and repair costs).

>pic unrelated

>the state has no control over the market.
This means no government-imposed regulations.
So other companies can offer something at a lower price and undermine the giant.
If the giant controls all of a certain substance (like all electric plants, all steel production, all orchards, water supply, etc.), the absence of regulations will allow people to buy from outside/foreign companies at a lower price, boycott the giant until they break up or share their supply, or start making things themselves (solar energy, filtering their own water, planting their own trees).
People are creative and those in a truly libertarian society will know how to provide for themselves without relying on big governments and companies.

It violates the Non-aggressive Price (NAP)

Monopolies can only exist with gov't help

Some good answers here but i'll add my own.
As of right now its illegal for me to create my own water system or power system for my property even if I go by regulation.
Without Government control that wouldn't happen.
Imagine 10 guys from the water company realize they have the combined knowledge to offer the service of creating and installing water systems fro citizens and companies, they leave the water company and do this, instantly creating competition.
See how that works?
Every price hike opens things up for competition.

autism

Concrete fact: The motivation behind anarchy is always kid fucking and drugs. Ancaps and Ancoms are the same faggots. They just disagree on how to move resources around. They both want a total lack of authority and morality so that they can be destructive degenerates.

that's your opinion
private property is fact, so is voluntary participation
I can respect property and individual's will, I don't have to respect a mouthbreathing useful idiot's opinion

an absence of fuhrer does not a total chaos make

Pic related is the supply & demand graph for a monopoly. The blue line is the marginal cost (MC) of producing some quantity of the monopoly's product (it is the supply curve, in this case). The red line is the demand curve for that monopoly's good/service. The green line is unique to individual firms, but since a monopoly warrants only one firm, it can be shown in the market here. That is the marginal revenue (MR) curve; it represents how much more money can be made from selling one more unit of the firm's product (say, a kiloliter of water or a kilowatt-hour of electricity).

For perfectly competitive firms, they have to charge the price where the supply and demand curves intersect. Charge too high, and you'll have a surplus of products. Charge too low, and you'll have a shortage.

Monopolies do not have to deal with this: instead, they can charge to maximize their profit; that is, the price where MR = MC (where the blue and green lines intersect). However, the demand curve is above that point; that means the consumers would be willing to pay the price at the point on the demand curve directly where MR = MC. Raising prices up to that point will allow you to increase profits without a problem. As a result, the firm ends up with a large surplus (they charge way more than they would have been willing to accept), the consumers end up with a small surplus (few consumers are willing to pay at the set price), and there is a loss of economic efficiency (yellow area).

So, how would one combat this deadweight loss without government intervention?

Simple: consumer intervention (boycotting). Remember, the demand curve is determined by the actions of consumers. If the consumers aren't willing to pay as much per product, the demand curve goes down and the monopoly cannot afford to drive up prices as high. Even if it is an essential good, a firm has to make a profit, otherwise it will go out of business and someone else will meet consumer demands.

Monopolies originated not as a market term, but rather as a writ from the crown granting the bearer the exclusive right to some market or means. All monoplies are granted by government and enforced by government. There has never EVER been a 'free market monopoly' and there never EVER will be. Even the companies which approached this like standard oil were constantly lowering prices and maintaining a competitive edge that basically were giving people the lowest cost good at the absolute lowest possible price. There has never EVER been a deregulation that has lead to a price increase, because competition and free market always leads to lower prices, even when there are currently no other competitors actively in the market.

>1
the only kind of monopoly that has ever existed.
>2
How did the firm get control of that key resource? Virtually no companies have control of such strategic resources without the consent of the government IE Uranium. Virtually no goods such as this exist and the few that do are owned by govt and therefore are type 1 monopolies.
>3
This is fictional bullshit. WoW is the biggest on the market because they provide a quality product at a good price. Other MMO's either have niche appeal (such as EVE Online) or lack the support and polish of WoW because the market for MMO's like WoW is a relic. In fact WoW is now the 4th largest MMO right after League, Crossfire, and Dungeon Fighter Online.
superdataresearch.com/market-data/mmo-market/

>4 Economies of scale, "Natural" monopoly
Fancy words don't actually make things economies of scale. in fact, most Utilities are expensive, poorly managed and have high maintenance costs BECAUSE they have monopolies that run them. Your local municipality does a shit job at maintaining the electrical system because its expensive to maintain the system because no one has upgraded it since the 70's, because no one wanted to take the political risk of raising taxes in a recession. More importantly regulation in these areas has lead to a lack of innovation which makes the monopolies appear 'natural' A classic example would be telecom, who in the 80's made it sound impossible for there to be innovation in telecommunication. When we broke up the bells, the result was not only the advent of better phone tech, it was the complete elimination of the 'telephone' technology all together. Now phone lines are used for DSL, which no one buys because its slow as shit. Wireless, Satellite, and cable now dominate the 'phone' market and your 'phone' is now a fucking super computer and not a POS rock.

Give me one example of a system with a 'natural' monopoly! You can't. Because Monopolies are not natural, and never have been.

The best part is a revolt against a business is much easier to do than the government.

Corporate entities are enforced by the government. They are allowed to take risks the public would never support because the government allows for privatized profits and publicized losses. Also because of this they can do illegal shit and the company gets sued, not the individuals running them. Deal with that and they have to answer directly to the people.

The overwhelming profit motive is still there and they are still the soulless institutions they were before, but much more open to attack from the people.

We would innovate and synthesize cheaper water in the lab.

>1
Not so, as I'll demonstrate.

>2
To be fair, this is rarely a problem, since most resources are too widespread to gain complete control of.

>3
That's an off-the-cuff example, admittedly. I suppose a better example would be private network companies, such as those in healthcare. Hospitals and offices need access to patient records for efficient treatment (lab results, consults, allergies, etc.), so companies such as Atlantic Health offer networks for these entities to share and store records. This market would be just as prone to such network externalities, since any hospital or office would want to join whatever network already has the largest number of users in their area. It would be very difficult to start a new firm to sell an alternative, since such a new network would have few users, few records, and thus little value to any firm in healthcare.

>4
Pic related shows the average total cost curve (ATC) for a firm producing electricity, and the total demand for electricity in the firm's market. Notice that ATC is still falling where it intersects the demand curve (point A). If the firm is a monopoly and produces 30 billion kWh of electricity per year, its ATC for production will be 4¢ per kWh.

Now, suppose there are two firms in this market, each producing at half the market output (so 15 billion kWh/year apiece). Assume that each firm has the same ATC curve, since they use the same type of equipment, require the same resources, follow the same installation procedures, etc. This figure shows that producing 15 billion kWh would move each firm up to 6¢ per kWh. So, if one of these firms decides to expand production to 30 billion kWh/year, it will drive down its ATC back to 4¢. With the lower ATC, it can offer electricity at a lower price than the other firm can offer, and drive it out of business. The remaining firm will thus have a monopoly. Since that monopoly develops almost automatically, it is said to be a natural monopoly.

Good thing the rest of us don't have to play along with your "property rights."