The World's Most Perfect Political Post

[OldTrees]

A monopoly on clean water would be a problem but also would be hard to enforce except in a landlocked desert.

Have you ever heard of this place called Gaza?  Maybe you have and you just aren't thinking of it.

I was referring to ones that would exist in an anarchy. You are referring to a State supported monopoly which could occur even on a fresh water lake.
PS: Those on the coast probably still have access to some water. But I do not know the details.

Monopolies only occur when government supported, when they do not act like monopolies or when the economies of scale require a monopoly because 2 firms would cause a reduction in wealth generated.

I fail at this sentence.  Monopolies occur in any free market, because one firm that controls all of the market share will always generate more wealth than 2 firms competing for control of that same market.  The government can artificially create monopolies by supporting one business over another over the long term, but far more often, monopolies are formed by market pressure -- more market share = more control over prices = more profit -- and then they manipulate the government into supporting them. 

Collapse of competition only occurs when natural monopolies occur or when barriers to entry are added to the market.

You keep saying stuff like this as though it defends your position when it doesn't. "barriers of entry" are CREATED BY MONOPOLIES -- and even near-monopolies!  Any time a company gets big enough to buy out whatever startup has a good idea in their field, that's pretty much the definition of "barrier to entry" -- and guess what?  That happens hundreds if not thousands of times every day, all across the country. 

So, your first quote above says (paraphrased) "monopolies only occur when one company would make more total wealth than two competing companies in the same market" -- and ignores the fact that that's a normal state of being.  And this quote acts like barriers to entry come from somewhere other than natural market forces.  Without any offense intended, I'm starting to think that you are, in fiscal terms at least, a libertarian because you honestly don't grok how a free market actually works.

A monopoly is not a normal state of being. Typically there is "decreasing returns". [I am still assuming you have as much knowledge as me on economics. Please correct me if you have not had a micro econ course.] Decreasing returns in production makes it so at some quantity it becomes less profitable for a single company to produce the entire load rather than 2 companies produce half of the quantity each.
Economies or Diseconomies of scale refers to the effect that determines the number of companies in a free market. The greater the diseconomies of scale at the quantity demanded the more new companies will rise with a severe competitive edge against the monopoly. Natural monopolies are defined as companies working in markets dominated only by economies of scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diseconomy_of_scale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

[Essence]

Theoretically, there comes a point of decreasing returns -- but only if you assume that in order to be a monopoly, a company has to have a centralized power structure.   A company that retains umbrella control over a host of subsidiaries but still aggregates the profits from those subsidiaries (Archer-Daniels-Midland, Glaxo-Smith-Kline) avoids almost all of the problems inherent in diseconomies of scale while still retaining the benefits of economies of scale.  The latter comes from the natural benefits of moving large volumes of stuff, whereas the former comes from the natural disadvantages of moving large amounts of information -- and there's no specific requirement that doing the former necessitates doing the latter.

Furthermore, since market forces encourage innovation, efficiency, and speed, I maintain that it's a virtual inevitability that the first business to figure out how exactly to get themselves into the situation I just mentioned will almost by definition become a monopoly given no external forces.

More importantly, even if they don't become a literal monoply, it's trivial to demonstrate that any large enough company could easily have monopolistic effects on large segments of the population, leading to the same problems albiet on a non-universal scale.

And for the record, I haven't ever taken an economics class.  But I have taken logic, statistics, and reasoning.  I also read a lot about a lot of subjects, and economics is one of my favorite -- oh, and I'm a pretty smart guy.  I'm not about to let a bit of formal training intimidate me.

[OldTrees]

Theoretically, there comes a point of decreasing returns -- but only if you assume that in order to be a monopoly, a company has to have a centralized power structure.   A company that retains umbrella control over a host of subsidiaries but still aggregates the profits from those subsidiaries (Archer-Daniels-Midland, Glaxo-Smith-Kline) avoids almost all of the problems inherent in diseconomies of scale while still retaining the benefits of economies of scale.  The latter comes from the natural benefits of moving large volumes of stuff, whereas the former comes from the natural disadvantages of moving large amounts of information -- and there's no specific requirement that doing the former necessitates doing the latter.

Furthermore, since market forces encourage innovation, efficiency, and speed, I maintain that it's a virtual inevitability that the first business to figure out how exactly to get themselves into the situation I just mentioned will almost by definition become a monopoly given no external forces.

More importantly, even if they don't become a literal monoply, it's trivial to demonstrate that any large enough company could easily have monopolistic effects on large segments of the population, leading to the same problems albiet on a non-universal scale.

And for the record, I haven't ever taken an economics class.  But I have taken logic, statistics, and reasoning.  I also read a lot about a lot of subjects, and economics is one of my favorite -- oh, and I'm a pretty smart guy.  I'm not about to let a bit of formal training intimidate me.

I would like links about ADM and GSK so I can research them more indepth. I did not find reliable sites (wiki and their websites).

They seem to have found (if you are presenting A D and M as competing carbon copy clone companies that set a monopolistic price like an oligarchy) an interesting solution to the lines of communication problem and the isolation from effect problem. This leaves a greater duplication of effort problem, doesn't impact office politics, has increased slow response time, inertia and cannibalism problems.

[Micro Econ has some important curves that I can't remember but from them important conclusions are reached. One of them was the average cost per unit produced curve that determines economies of scale.]

[Essence]

That's precisely the problem, Trees.  There IS no information publicly available about them.  They keep it that way because there is no outside force to prevent them from doing so.

[OldTrees]

That's precisely the problem, Trees.  There IS no information publicly available about them.  They keep it that way because there is no outside force to prevent them from doing so.

So you do or do not have evidence that they are a monopoly rather than either a oligarchy or a multimarket corporation? This is the kind of information that would be public for the stock holders to know how to judge the value of the stock.
All I want to know is their precise markets.

[Essence]

ADM is a food corporation.  GSK is pharma.

[OldTrees]

ADM is a food corporation.  GSK is pharma.

That was not the question.
The question is what is the market for A, for D, for M ... ?
Are they the same markets or are there differences?
Are the differences relevant?

Food is not a market. Rather it is a collection of many different markets like grains, meat, ... Even those are groups of smaller markets.