Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“After leading with the theory of perfect competition, economics textbooks standardly add a ‘corrective’ chapter on the evils of monopoly. While they occasionally mention government-created monopoly, the focus is almost always on the harm of free-market monopoly, and the necessity of antitrust laws to combat such monopoly. A free-market monopoly is a business that manages to control a whole industry, and uses its control to slash output and raise prices. Later textbook chapters move on to markets with varying degrees of ‘monopoly power’ – and broadly conclude that as monopoly power goes up, market performance goes down. The moral: Free markets are only optimal in an extreme polar case. The further the real world strays from that case, the more suboptimal they become – and the more regulation improves the free-market outcome. Murray Rothbard rejects this picture, using three different sets of arguments.” (10/22/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/repairing-rothbardian-monopoly-theory