TurnLeftThenRight, MS is not a coercive monopoly, because they are not the only seller of Operating Systems and they don’t make you buy it. Anyway, I fail to see how MS have been bad for consumers, think about how much extra productivity the world has experienced because of Windows software.

Who do you think makes a better contribution to the world? A Mother Teresa who hands people bowls of slop every day, so they can barely exist or a genius like Bill Gates who creates a fortune for himself by helping others to create fortunes for themselves?

As for duopolies, there is always the incentive for one to undercut the other and steal market share away from the other. The consumer is the one who benefits from this price war. Besides, there are still other stores like IGA and your standard corner store.

As for wealth accumulating into fewer hands, there is actually a two-sided benefit that we get from the capital owned by others. It’s the source of the supply of goods we buy and the source of demand for our own labour. This means lower prices and higher wages. Even without real wage increase, most still benefit from the fact that we have better technology. Would you rather have surgery in hospital these days or back in the 70’s(where you might say equality was better)?

Col Rouge, about the quote, I didn’t mean to say you said it, I’m just saying it’s almost as though that’s what anti-trust laws are about.

For a good to be exchanged, there must be a willing buyer and seller, and either party should be able to refuse the transaction for whatever reason it wants to. Those funeral directors are under no obligation to offer services at what you might call a low enough price. If people are willing to pay it, what’s the problem?

As for Telstra, I’m not going into that because that actually IS a monopoly that was put into place by the government and didn’t happen via the free market.

For a read about anti-trust: http://www.mises.org/story/394