--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> >> Those profits do not come from
> >> redistributing surplus created by other
> capitalist's
> >> workers. They come from overcharging consumers.
> >
> > Which means that some other capitalist's sales are
> suffering, no?
Only hypothetically, I mean, Microsoft's monopoly power keeps out people who would compete if it were not for the entry barriers and so forth, but it's not like there is a fixed amount of surplus generated that gets divied up between MS and all the firms that might complete in other circumstances. That is why it is incorrect to describe monopoly rent as redistribution of surplus. The obvious victims of Microsoft are the consumers. Of course sometimes it illegallys screws actual competitors. But they don't define the pool of potential players in a competitive market.
> >
> > Doug
>
> To follow Doug's thread a little: overcharging
> customers can't
> lead to overall economic growth,
Well, monopoly is bad for the economy, that's standard neoclassical fare.
because the cost
> just becomes
> an excessive liability for some other business.
> It's a wash.
This makes no sense at all.
>
> Simple example: Economy consists of businesses A and
> B. If
> A engages in trickery and price gouging, B takes the
> loss
> when it buys stuff from A, or it retaliates. In any
> case,
> the profit generated by the system as a whole due to
> price
> gouging is zero.
No no no no no. It's likely that total profits in a competitive market will be higher because more players will be drawn in, although the ex-monopolists profits will be lower. And everyone's individual profgit marghins will be lower. But this is normal mainstream economics. I know of no theorem that show on any sety of assumptions that the monopolist's gain is balanced out by the nonmonopolists' losses due to the monopolists' monopolizing. (Sorry about that sentence) One reason that can't be is that, as noted, we don't know who the other players will be in a competitive market.
Why do Marxists have a problem with acknowledging that consumers can be exploited?
jks
>
> Miles
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