Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site cbscc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbsck!cbscc!lvc
From: lvc@cbscc.UUCP (Larry Cipriani)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: more on oligopolies - another answer to Tim Sevener
Message-ID: <4344@cbscc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Dec-84 16:19:59 EST
Article-I.D.: cbscc.4344
Posted: Wed Dec 12 16:19:59 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Dec-84 02:51:55 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus
Lines: 31

From Tim Sevener:

	Oh, come now, how did "government" have anything to do with John D.
	Rockefeller's control of 99% of the oil industry?  He took it over
	all by himself!  This is precisely the problem Libertarians with
	their belief in the magical "invisible hand" fail to address:
	how did once free markets come to be dominated by a few firms?
	Does this not seem to have been a natural outgrowth of the economic
	system itself?  What would prevent Standard Oil from acquiring a
	monopoly with no government intervention?  The fact is they did so.
	Why has our present economy become more and more dominated by large
	oligpolies?

From an *economist* friend of mine:

     John D Rockefeller initially came to control so much of the oil industry
because he was the first to exploit the commercial potential of petroleum
(previously, whale oil had lit America's lamps).  Initally, he controlled--not
99% of the oil industry--100% of the oil industry, just as AT&T once controlled
100% of the bipolar-transistor industry.

     When one realizes that Rockefeller was first, one realizes that it is just
plain stupid to ask how Rockefeller came to control the oil industry.  The real
question is: How did he RETAIN control?  The best book on how industrialists
USED THE GOVERNMENT to preserve their market shares is *The Triumph of
Conservatism : A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916* by Gabriel
Kolko (Kolko is, incidently, a radical Leftist, not a Libertarian).

				Larry Cipriani
				cbscc!cbsch!lvc