How can an anarcho-capitalist population combat against unfair cartel agreements, pricing fixing, etc?
Or perhaps the cartels can be used as a form of political parties in the absence of government.
See Caplan and Stringham on this.
AnalyticalAnarchism.net - The Positive Political Economy of Anarchism
TelfordUS: How can an anarcho-capitalist population combat against unfair cartel agreements, pricing fixing, etc? Or perhaps the cartels can be used as a form of political parties in the absence of government.
Why should it? What is wrong with cartel agreements? Anyway, cartels tend to destroy themselves from within. Eventually, members of the cartel begin to undercut each other, etc, or other firms and products enter the market. Also, the most famous modern cartel, OPEC, is actually composed of governments.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Cartels are generally dependant on subsidization, regulation and monopoly, all of which are created by government. For example, a regulation that costs around 1,000,000 to comply with universally is much more of a hardship for a small business owner making, say, 120,000 a year than it is to a multinational corporation raking in tens of billions a year and with political connections.
According to game theory cartels are impossible :)
There is much truth in that though, I think a cartel can only function if there are personal ties between the heads of the involved companies.
Even without government incentives there is just to much to gain from breaking the cartel and too much to loose by staying in it when someone else breaks it.
A cartel is also basically a monopoly and there is no such thing as a monopoly on a free-market. Even if there are no other active companies in your market that only means that you are as good as a company in that market could possible be and deliver the best and cheapest stuff possible (or very close).
If your products where overpriced and bad and there where no artificial barriers of entry someone else would have entered the market already, it is the same thing with a cartel. There maybe some natural barriers of entry to the market but if competitors can't overcome those and still do something better then you it really just means what I said before, that the dominant company is already doing things as good as things can possibly be done.
Escaping Leviathan - regardless of public opinion
"Democracy is the road to socialism." - Karl Marx
TelfordUS:How can an anarcho-capitalist population combat against unfair cartel agreements, pricing fixing, etc?
Monopolization is next to impossible from forming on an open market. If it does form it won't last. Cartelization is also extremely difficult to accomplish. Some would argue more difficult then monopoly. getting all parties to participate when each have an incentive to undermined the next is pretty much the point.
Still even if a cartel sustained itself on a free market it wouldn't be what your envisioning in your head. It would have to be a firm that provided cheap/quality goods/services to consumers lest they loose their consumer pool.
http://mises.org/media/3686