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The market doesn't tend toward competition, it tends toward power, no state needed.
Try to compete with network effects, economies of scale, lock-in, vertical integration, buying rivals, barriers to entry, regulatory capture, control of essential resources, first-mover advantage, cartels, predatory dumping, brand loyalty, control of distribution channels, proprietary standards, monopsony, talent absorption....
Once formed, a monopoly doesn't need an army, it just needs you to have nowhere to go
The historical basis for these claims is pretty weak and the equilibrium conditions of even mainstream economic models don't really support it either.
Monopolies have almost always been government granted arrangements and cartels are notoriously difficult to maintain. All the incentives are towards finding ways to enter these markets with elevated profits.
Many monopolies have been state-granted, but "almost always" doesn't hold up.
- The Hudson's Bay Company controlled the fur trade in the Pacific Northwest without anyone granting it anything, it just occupied the land.
- The New River Company supplied London with water for centuries because it owned the infrastructure, not because a king signed a piece of paper.
- Standard Oil hit 90% of US refining before the Sherman Act existed.
- De Beers ran its diamond cartel for a century without a concession.
- ASML holds the EUV monopoly because nobody else has replicated 40 years of R&D.
The state is one source of monopoly, not the only one, the market doesn't self-regulate, it concentrates.
- There were other sources of fur on the market. Not a monopoly.
- Not familiar with the New River Company, but color me highly skeptical that this was a genuine market operator with no protections or privileges. If you have a good account of it, I'd be interested to see it. The network effects and high infrastructure costs make utilities especially interesting.
- Standard Oil's market share had begun declining before the Sherman Act passed (https://mises.org/mises-daily/truth-about-robber-barons) and they weren't charging elevated prices anyway. The large market share came from innovation and offering lower prices than others could match. It took a while for competitors to catch up.
- I thought DeBeers did have state-granted monopoly protections. Plus, there are other sources of diamonds, including artificial ones, so the market was pushing towards competition, anyway.
- Not familiar with ASML situation.
So, not even the cherry-picked examples form the pattern you describe. I maintain my "almost always" position. Monopolies are hard to maintain because they create the conditions for their own demise: elevated profits. That is the self-correcting mechanism that you say doesn't exist.
You want unregulated nuclear power plants?
Electricity distribution along with railways and roads and online markets like Ebay are all natural monopolies or duopolies. They tend by their nature to favour the established player/s as the cost of entry is high or intrinsically limited.
The most efficient provision of roads, power distribution and rail lines is via one network within any geography. They do not allow easy entry to new competitors. Established players have an automatic advantage and can and do tend to squeeze out intending competitors due to scales of economy and market dynamics.
Also, regulatory capture and most barriers to entry are not market phenomena (at least not currently).
There are countervailing factors to scale, such that gains to increased scale are not always greater than the costs of increasing scale. Large corporations currently use the state to be larger than they otherwise could be.
The state isn't irrelevant, but it's not the origin of everything. The market concentrates power on its own, and when that power is big enough, it captures the state to consolidate. Your own argument confirms it: if big corporations use thestate to grow bigger, it's because they were already big before they used it
Agreed with almost everything, taxes and inflation are theft, democracy doesn't make it moral, the NAP is a solid foundation... but the free market doesn't eliminate corruption, markets get captured, monopolies form, and corporate power can be as coercive as state power. That's why I'm a bitcoiner, I want to build an exit so I don't have to depend on anyone