With the end result, if allowed to continue would to be reduce the number of competitors in its industry, and then prices would rise.
No, Standard Oil was losing share not gaining share, for decades before it was broken up. And even earlier when it was gaining share, or when it had 90% or more refining share, it could only keep that share by continuing to cut prices. When it tried to raise prices by itself, or in concert with others (something that would be against anti-trust law today) it lost share. Without being either a natural or a protected monopoly it still faced the impact of competition even when it had 90% of the market. Depending on exactly how you define monopoly, that might make it merely a "near monopoly", or a "dominate firm", rather than a monopoly, but most people think of it as a monopoly, in fact the most famous one, and one that helped create the push for antitrust laws.
our history is replete with bad fall out from unregulated markets.
Regulation can mean different things. Most narrowly it can include only formal rule promulgated by regulatory bodies. More broadly it can include many types of laws, legal interpretations, interpretations of regulations, and informal influence or power by regulators, politicians, and officials of all types. More broadly still it can mean anything that serves to regulate activity, which would include concerns about reputation, market forces etc.. I don't normally use regulation in the third manner, and I don't think you are, but those are the most powerful forces for avoiding bad fall out in most markets, even in most strongly regulated (in the sense of government rules) markets.
Going with either of the first two definitions (and I think your using one of them as I normally would), then yes unregulated markets have had bad fall out...
...as has lightly regulated, moderately regulated, and heavily regulated markets.
Less from unregulated markets than the others, but to be fair unregulated markets are extremely rare, almost non-existent nowadays. |
