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RE: Competition, Efficiency and Freedom vs Monopoly, Inefficiency and Slavery
Free markets do generate natural de-facto monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies. Microsoft and Bitmain being two good examples of it. Visa/MasterCard as well. With shipping too, the barrier to enter the market can be very high once a company has developed a good network for the last mile delivery.
In Norway there are plenty of examples. Remember Color Air? How much of your good has been distributed by NorgesGruppen? Does finn.no has any serious competition? Etc
Well, I'm based on what I've read. Microsoft is a highly mercantilist company, the current monopolies are products to a greater extent of Crony Capitalism. As I said, in an environment of freedom, as in a free market, competition should be the rule among people who offer the same product, and cooperation should be the rule among people who offer different products. A free market is very different from what we see today, the division of labor under a free natural market environment eliminates the possibility of monopolies.
This is true, but only under the current precepts, because what would really happen is that the division of labor would not allow a company to become a monopoly, since specialization would prevent it from competing with the rest. That is, in a free market, there could not be a company dedicated to selling shirts and pants, unless it does both very well, and instead of having large textile companies, we would have companies that make shirts, and others that make pants , and not only that, we would see specialization, that is, some would make sports pants, and another would make pants for suits.
Focusing on producing in a niche market would be necessary to compete in a fully free economy, without taxes, without legislation, without juicy contracts with the State.
Oh, your post was reblogged by @scandinavianviking, I failed to see it was not written by him. My Norwegian analogies was hence a bit irrelevant, sorry by that.
Microsoft is not at all as dominant as it used to be - its dominance was mainly ended by technological innovation and sheer luck.
One major blow came already as the Internet became more popular among regular consumers than the Microsoft Network. I'm very happy that it ended up that way. The Internet could have been as irrelevant as Usenet or Fidonet today. The next major blow was when Windows for Mobile failed becoming popular and Android became popular.
Microsoft is still very dominant on their Office series, it's much aided by government contracts and public schools teaching pupils and students The Microsoft Way of doing things, but I doubt things would have been different in a world without governments.