/libertypol/ - Libertarian General

Sure there are plenty of libertarian leaning people who are not fully Minarchist or Ancap.

Not really. A lot of modern day monopolies are in fact caused by governments. In todays world of heavy regulations it's really difficult to set up a new start up company in pretty much any field other than IT. This removes a lot of competition for the already established companies which is the most important prerequisite for monopoly.

I understand how you feel, I thought that the government should somehow intervene to prevent monopolies as well, but got totally redpilled on that by senior libertarians. Still, I DO think that in some cases, like in situations where resources are scarce enough, monopolies would still exist in a free society, but the state can only do more damage. Not to mention that not everything that looks like a monopoly is in fact a monopoly.

If you want I can try to explain by example, but not really sure if I remember everything correctly.

Well you've got two flawed standards with a policy prescription like that: firstly, that perfect competition is the benchmark we should be aiming for, and secondly, that the government will do a better job.

I prefer the Mengerian standard of competition as a dynamic, rivalrous process, as has been advocated prominently in the Austrian school of economics. It takes into account the pivotal role of entrepreneurship, which perfect competition doesn't.

Plus perfect competition isn't even competition anyway. It's loaded with all these unrealistic assumptions that don't mirror the real world in any way such as perfect information, homogenous products etc, and to hold that as a standard doesn't make sense. It provides, for example, a justification for why JK Galbraith found advertising an economic inefficiency. And yet, advertising through a Mengerian and Coasean lens would more accurately suggest that advertising serves to decrease searching and transaction costs.

I would recommend Thomas J. DiLorenzo's work on this subject. You can find many of his Mises lectures on youtube or on mises.org. It's far more detailed than I can be, remembering this stuff off the top of my head.

As for the idea that the government will do a better job… Well I think there's more than enough empirical evidence of that. But I think better arguments will focus on the incentives and the impact of the regulations that inevitably accompany government-sanctioned monopolisation that governments face versus that of a private firm. Perhaps a good, recent example of this is Uber vs the Taxi cartels.

>>66
What, in your opinion, should be the proper function of government?

>>77
I'm a voluntaryist. I see government itself as improper, therefore there is no proper role for it. I view it as barbarian, primitive, and a crippling force that harms society.

The reason we allow them to exist is because they're supposed to protect us from violent threats. In practice, they almost always do the opposite. If there were any proper role, that would be it.