> Would you mind explaining how a company could hold monopoly power while not actually holding a monopoly?
Quite arguably, you can’t, but monopoly power (particularly, its expression as pricing power) can be observable (and itself proves an actual monopoly) when monopoly would not be clear by other means.
The ability to price without sales going to a competitor demonstrates the absence of actual competition, regardless of the superficial apparent competition in a described market.
> I think there's an important difference between a monopoly and a company that happens to have no competition at the moment. I think that active anti-competitive actions are one of the defining characteristics of a monopoly
You are of course free to think so, but be aware that does not align with the common use of the term monopoly.
> You're setting an unreasonably high bar for what you're willing to define as a monopoly
No I'm not. A monopoly by definition requires no competition, and monopolistic profits are not possible with competition. They could possibly occur with cartels in markets with high barriers to entry, but cartels are unstable because the markets benefit cartel-breaking behavior more than they benefit cartel behavior.
I find it absolutely rational of you to not want to discuss any further. It's the natural end state of stubborn ignorance. I've already demonstrated that not all markets end in monopoly, but only those with high barriers to entry. If any reader wants more examples, they can google the term Commodity.
> Could you name an existing stable monopoly that is not a state-granted monopoly.
No, because we have regulations to prevent them and break them up.
There are a number of entities that are clearly restraining their classically monopolistic behavior BECAUSE of the regulations such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
> Can someone explain how Google has a monopoly when there are competitors in their league?
Being a monopoly doesn’t mean you have no competitors - it means you have enough control of the market to artificially affect/set the market price for something (ie that there was not enough competition for efficient pricing).
> Nobody wins except the monopolist, and monopolies are already bad, so why help them?
You are obviously entitled to the opinion that monopolies are bad but, fwiw, the ftc is a lot more concerned with anti-competitive behavior than it is with monopolies. Those get conflated because they frequently occur together but a lot of companies have monopolies that most people don't really have an issue with because they aren't anti-competitive.
Sometimes a monopoly is a monopoly because they are better than everyone else.
> If they lose, they could be broken up for being a monopoly.
Correct. Monopolies have been given a pass because they supposedly have not raised prices for consumers. If it can be shown that they have then their argument falls apart.
In a monopoly there wouldn't be significant competitors to compare against.
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