alt Hacker NewsGasoline is heavily regulated and subsidized. Leaving the oil market alone resulted in Standard Oil, and we obviously don't want that again.
Replies
Straw • today at 1:56 AM
Standard oil not only reduced consumer prices for gasoline, but was already losing its monopoly to competitors during the antitrust trial.
I am not saying that there should be no regulations on monopolies. We are discussing a very specific market intervention, namely the proposal to
> systematically [use] a pricing structure that charges disproportionately more for usage above high thresholds.
This is what I'm arguing is a bad idea, by using gasoline as an example.
If you want to argue that imposing this pricing structure systematically is good because it would help prevent a bad monopoly like Standard Oil, you'd need to explain (a) how this market intervention would prevent monopolies and (b) how it's a "better" way (according to however we decide to measure "better") to prevent monopolies than the alternatives. I don't see how this is true, though.