No Stupid Questions

I think you're missing the point, actually..

( I'm autistic, & simply don't buy that ideology is ever going to make a good world, communist, fascist, corporatist, moneyarchist, religion-regime, any of them )

There is a fundamental problem in human economies, in that it is initiative which starts companies ( obviously ) & if initiative is allowed to concentrate wealth/rights/privilege, it will, until you don't have civilrights, anymore.

Therefore, there needs to be a kind of civil-harnessing..

At the other end, collectivism snuffs innovation & diversity & initiative, fairly automatically..

The root-problem is that BOTH are needed, but the economy has to somehow cultivate individual-initiative & group-initiative ( which work differently ) AND give the good innovators ( not the criminal ones ) both freedom & leverage & resources to get their contribution going, which is something that collectivity tends to snuff..

Another misframing is that monopolies shouldn't even be allowed in the 1st place, because they are, in the long-term, economic hostage-takers, or economic suicide ( a country putting all its eggs in a single basket, & pretending that that'll work forever ).

The correct policy is simply to use the tax-system to make it more costly to have fewer competitors, such that there is an optimal number of competitors in any industry, & they are actually competing.

That makes it less-profitable to extinguish your competitors through machiavellianism, see? The fewer competitors, the higher the tax rate.. suppressing monopoly, rather than accommodating it, & then having the problems it created, & then having fights about how to mitigate those problems..

Do understand that I think worker-owned business is the ideal configuration, but it has to be earned-place, not just inertia, institution, or seniority that grants ownership, it has to be contribution ( "Slicing Pie Handbook" is the best book for the concept, for startups: how to allocate shares/equity in the startup ).

I've heard about .. in the Basque region, .. cooperatives .. it takes years to earn a share in the company, and the loyalty AND drive are both excellent, & the companies were robust & did well..

That's the right sort of thing.

No "you exist, therefore you have institution-rights, but no responsibility/accountability, because our institutionality/union/class/wealth prevents that" .. kind of idiocy..

Rather, real earning-of-equity..

interesting..

I just realized that this makes-obvious that people with no interest in earning equity, they only want to do the minimum, get paid, & go do non-work things .. are incompatible with that kind of company/operation,

therefore there HAVE to be 2 ( or more ) different phases of the economy: companies with worker-equity & companies where nobody is invested in the company except the owners/managers, because that's an actual significant-portion of the population's mode..

that makes it .. more difficult to find an optimal single-set-of-rules for an economy, because the motivations don't mesh..

So, apparently a set-of-rules is required for each system-of-motivations?

looks like it..

interesting..

_ /\ _

There are "natural monopolies" where it's most efficient to have a monopolist. These things are usually publicly owned because of this. Things like utilities. These should stay as publicly owned.

Everything else: cooperatives.

I think there are some natural monopolies where it makes sense to let them be run as monopolies with some form of government control. The energy grid is a good example, you can different suppliers providing electricity but the transmission of it should be within one company/system.

Consider the following three types of monopolies:

There are monopolies where a single entity has entrenched their position by having the categorically superior product, so far ahead of any competition and while no barriers are erected to prevent competitors, there simply is no hope and they will all play second fiddle. This type of monopoly doesn't really exist, except for a transient moment, for if there initially wasn't a barrier, there soon will be: as market leader, the monopolist accumulates capital that at best is unavailable to the competitors (ie zero sum resources, like land or labor), and at worst stands in the way of free competition (eg brand recognition, legally -recognized intellectual property).

The second type is the steady-state scenario following the first, which is a monopoly that benefits from or actively enforces barriers against their competitors. Intellectual property (eg Disney) can be viewed as akin to the conventional means of production (land, labor, capital), so the monopolist that controls the usable land or can hire the best labor will cement their position as monopolist. In economic terms, we could say that the cost to overturn the monopolist is very high, and so perhaps it's economically reasonable to be a second-tier manufacturer rather than going up against the giant. The key ingredient for the monopolist is having that structure in place, to keep everyone else at bay.

The third type is the oddball, for it's what we might call a "natural" or "practical" monopoly. While land, labor, and capital are indeed limited, what happens when it's actually so limited that there's basically only one? It's a bit hard to conceptualize having just one plot of land (maybe an island?) or having just one Dollar, but consider a single person who has such specialized knowledge that she is the only such person in the world. Do we say she is a monopolist because she can command whatever price she wants for her labor? Is she a monopolist because she does not share her knowledge-capital? What if she physically can't, for the knowledge is actually experience, honed over a lifetime? If it took her a lifetime to develop, then she may already lack the remaining lifetime to teach someone else for their lifetime.

I use this example to segue to the more-customary example of a natural monopoly: the local electricity distribution system, not to be confused with the electric grid at-large, which also includes long-distance power lines. The distinction is as follows: the big, long power lines can compete with each other, taking different routes over terrain, under water, or sometimes even partially conducting through the earth itself. But consider that at a local level, on a residential street, there can practically only be a single distributor circuit for the neighborhood.

I cannot be served by Provider X's wires while Co-Op Y's wires serve my neighbor, and Corpo Z's wires serve the school down the road. Going back to the convention means of production, we could say there is only one plot of land available to run these distributor circuits. So at most one entity can own and operate those wires.

Laying all that background, let's look at your titular question. For monopoly types 1 and 2, it's entirely feasible to divide and collectivize those monopolies. But it's the natural monopolies that are problematic: if you divide them up (let's say geographically) and then collectivize them, there will still only ever be one "owner" of the distribution lines. You cannot have Collective A own a few meters of wire, and then Collective B owns a few meters in between, all while Collective C is connected at the end of the street. The movement of electric power is amenable to such granular collectivization.

To that end, the practical result is the same no matter how you examine it: a natural monopoly is one which cannot feasibly be split up, even when there's the will to do so. Generalizing quite a lot, capitalists would approach a natural monopoly with intent to exploit it for pure profit, while social democrats would seek to regulate natural monopolies (eg US State's public utilities commissions), and democratic socialists would want to push for state ownership of all natural monopolies, while communists would seek the dissolution of the state and have the natural monopoly serve everyone "according to their need". But the monopoly still exists in all these scenarios, for it can't be done any other way.

Other natural monopolies exist, but even things like radio spectrum are relatively plentiful compared to local power lines, for which there really is just one place to build them. We don't have wireless power yet.

Collective worker ownership should happen to every business everywhere.

So first off anyone who says boring shit like calling you a "revisionist" or "read theory" is a moron unable to defend their position, they're treating socialist theory like a cultish religion.

Or to put it another way MLs are dumb, ignore them.

Generally I think if there are state owned assets, work on them should generally be contracted out to cooperatives, as that puts workers truly in control (as opposed to being cogs in the machine) and allows workers to find a different cooperative to work at, but I don't think there is any one "correct" answer.

No, some of them should just be socialized. Some markets are naturally uncompetitive and don't serve the public well when guided strictly by profit motive.

Id say the one with a superior product isn't a monopoly at all. If it superior to something, it must have competition.

I might get banned for telling you this, but a little insider secret for you is that the DB0 admins aren't all that different from ML, as you will eventually find out.

No. Monopolies that are monopolies because they offer a superior product that others don't offer absolutely deserve their success. Monopolies that are monopolies because they hold others back absolutely should be broken up. The difference is in why they are a monopoly.

There are certain nuances when a company is too big to compete with - things like YouTube where video hosting is hella expensive. That is a grey area that I do not have an educated opinion on.

The only good Monopoly is state driven. Everything else is bullshit