Draft:Monopolistic practices

Monopolistic practices are actions that reduce the fair market competition between enterprises or entrepreneurs.

Economics
"Monopolistic market structures and their consequences have for long been part of established economic analysis ... However, real-world monopolies do not always fit the textbook categories ... The matter has been brought to a head in recent years by cases initiated by antitrust authorities against allegedly monopolistic firms ... These cases have served to highlight the inadequacies of traditional monopoly analysis ... From these cases has emerged a much better understanding of dominant firms."

Monopolies
"If such a fringe existed and became a threat to the dominant firm then we would expect the dominant group, by predatory action, to do something about it."

Def. a "situation, [by legal privilege or other agreement], in which solely one [party (company, cartel etc.)] exclusively provides a particular product or service, dominating that market and generally exerting powerful control over it" or an "exclusive control over the trade or manufacture [production] of a commodity or service through exclusive possession" is called a monopoly.

A state could be said to "succeed" if it maintains, according to philosopher Max Weber, a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. When this is broken (e.g., through the dominant presence of warlords, paramilitary groups, or terrorism), the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and the state becomes a failed state.

Practices
"In each instance, the politically dominant group is attempting to design a constitution that will legitimize its hold on power and allow it to continue to monopolize resource allocation."

"In 1972, the ruling elites in Cameroon hurriedly put together a constitution that abolished the country's federal system and made Cameroon a one-party dictatorship."

Def. repetition "of an activity to improve [a] skill" is called a practice.

Privileges
"The history of patents does not begin with inventions, but rather with royal grants by Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) for monopoly privileges ... Approximately 200 years after the end of Elizabeth's reign, however, a patent represents a legal [right] obtained by an inventor providing for exclusive control over the production and sale of his mechanical or scientific invention ... [demonstrating] the evolution of patents from royal prerogative to common-law doctrine."

Theoretical monopolistic practices
Here's a theoretical definition:

Def. repetition "of an activity to improve [a] skill" "in a manner of a" "situation, [by legal privilege or other agreement], in which solely one [party (company, cartel etc.)] exclusively provides a particular product or service, dominating that market and generally exerting powerful control over it" or an "exclusive control over the trade or manufacture [production] of a commodity or service through exclusive possession" is called monopolistic practice.

Oligopolies

 * 1) "Specifically, we show that networks with the dominant group architecture, stars, and inter-linked stars are stable.",
 * 2) "In addition, networks with a large dominant group and several isolated firms are also stable.", and
 * 3) "In particular, the complete network, where every firm has a collaboration link with every other firm, and the network with a dominant group, which contains a large number of completely connected firms and several isolated firms, appear to be stable under different competitive environments."

"[U]nder moderate competition, spillovers may have the effect of lowering the level of collaborations."

For evaluating the effects of entry regulation on oligopolistic interaction, "[l]et there be two groups of firms, call them D (for the dominant group) and F (for the fringe)." The results from an analysis of "the effects of entry restrictions on conduct ... are consistent with a [Heinrich Freiherr von Stackelberg] von Stackelberg type of industry where the degree of oligopolistic interaction among the leading firms is reduced as a consequence of the relaxation of the legal entry barriers."

Objects
"But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts."

Governments
"For the first time ever, approximately 3,500 hedge funds and other private fund advisers will report a broad range of information about their funds to government regulators."

"Hedge fund and other private fund reporting brings greater transparency to our financial system, including to financial companies that operate outside a framework of prudential oversight and supervision. Until now, regulators generally have had only the most rudimentary information about private funds. Form PF gives regulators data about a wide range of issues, including private funds’ exposure to different asset classes, use of leverage and vulnerability to liquidity pressures. Equipped with these data, regulators will be in a better position to determine if any fund or set of funds could pose a risk to financial stability. The availability of more information from private fund advisers will complement other key provisions of Wall Street Reform, such as central clearing and trade reporting requirements for over-the-counter derivatives, which increase transparency and reduce risk outside the traditional banking system."

Geography
"Europeans arrived in Indonesia from the 16th century seeking to monopolise the sources of valuable nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper in Maluku. In 1602 the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and became the dominant European power. Following bankruptcy, the VOC was formally dissolved in 1800, and the government of the Netherlands established the Dutch East Indies as a nationalised colony. By the early 20th century Dutch dominance extended to what was to become Indonesia's current boundaries. The Japanese invasion and subsequent occupation during WWII ended Dutch rule, and encouraged the previously suppressed Indonesian independence movement. Two days after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, nationalist leader, Sukarno, declared independence and was appointed president. The Netherlands tried to reestablish their rule, but a bitter armed and diplomatic struggle ended in December 1949, when in the face of international pressure, the Dutch formally recognised Indonesian independence."

"Beginning in the sixteenth century, successive waves of Europeans—the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British—sought to dominate the spice trade at its sources in India and the 'Spice Islands' (Maluku) of Indonesia. This meant finding a way to Asia to cut out Muslim merchants who, with their Venetian outlet in the Mediterranean, monopolised spice imports to Europe. Astronomically priced at the time, spices were highly coveted not only to preserve and make poorly preserved meat palatable, but also as medicines and magic potions."

"Early 18th century Dutch map; only the north coastal ports of Java are well known.In the 17th and 18th centuries the Dutch East Indies were not controlled directly by the Dutch government, but by a joint-stock trading company, the Dutch East India Company (in Dutch: Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). The VOC had been awarded a monopoly on trade and colonial activities in the region by the Dutch parliament in 1602, but had no territory of its own in Java. In 1619, the Company conquered the Javanese city of Jayakarta, burned it to the ground and then founded the city of Batavia (present-day Jakarta), modelling it on Amsterdam."

"A primary aim of the VOC was the maintenance of its monopoly of the spice trade in the archipelago. It did this through the use and threatened use of violence against the peoples of the spice-producing islands, and against non-Dutch outsiders who attempted to trade with them. For example, when the people of the Banda Islands continued to sell nutmeg to English merchants, the Dutch killed or deported virtually the entire population and repopulated the islands with VOC indentured servants and slaves who worked in the nutmeg groves."

"Batavian (Jakarta) tea factory in the 1860sAfter the VOC was dissolved in 1800 following bankruptcy,[17] and after a short British rule under Thomas Stamford Raffles, the Dutch state took over the VOC possessions in 1816. For most of the colonial period, Dutch control over these territories was tenuous; only in the early 20th century did Dutch dominance extend to what was to become Indonesia's current boundaries.N1 A Javanese uprising was crushed in the Java War of 1825-1830. After 1830 a system of forced cultivations was introduced on Java, the Cultivation System (in Dutch: cultuurstelsel). This system brought the Dutch and their Indonesian collaborators enormous wealth. The cultivation system was a government monopoly and was abolished in a more liberal period after 1870."

Recent history
The recent history period dates from around 1,000 b2k to present.

"After the Civil War, continuing industrialization and the associated rise of both modern corporations and financial capitalism increased Democratic pressure to reform the tariff. Many Americans, especially in the South and West, came to regard the tariff as a tax that was not only regressive but also protective of corporate monopolies. One result was the enactment, in 1894, of a progressive income tax. But in 1895 the Supreme Court, in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company, claimed, with little historical justification, that the architects of the Constitution regarded an income tax as a direct tax. Since Congress had not allocated the 1894 tax to the states on the basis of population, the tax was, in the Court's view, unconstitutional. Another result of reform pressure was the adoption in 1898, during the Spanish-American War, of the first federal taxation of estates. This tax was graduated according to both the size of the estate and the degree of relationship to the deceased. The Supreme Court upheld the tax in Knowlton v. Moore (1900), but in 1902 a Republican Congress repealed it."

"State and local tax policy also began to change under the pressure of industrialization. The demand of urban governments for the funds required for new parks, schools, hospitals, transit systems, waterworks, and sewers crushed the general property tax. In particular, traditional self-assessment of property values proved inadequate to expose and determine the value of intangible property such as corporate stocks and bonds. Rather than adopt rigorous and intrusive new administrative systems to assess the value of such, most local governments focused property taxation on real estate, which they believed they could assess accurately at relatively low cost. Some states considered following the advice of the reformer Henry George and replacing the property tax with a "single tax" on the monopoly profits embedded in the price of land. Farm lobbies, however, invariably blocked such initiatives. Instead, after 1900, state governments began replacing property taxation with special taxes, such as income taxes, inheritance taxes, and special corporate taxes. Beginning in the 1920s, state governments would continue this trend by adding vehicle registration fees, gasoline taxes, and general sales taxes."

"The World War I income tax, which the Revenue Act of 1916 established as a preparedness measure, was an explicit "soak-the-rich" instrument. It imposed the first significant taxation of corporate profits and personal incomes and rejected moving toward a "mass-based" income tax—one falling most heavily on wages and salaries. The act also reintroduced the progressive taxation of estates. Further, it adopted the concept of taxing corporate excess profits. Among the World War I belligerents, only the United States and Canada placed excess-profits taxation—a graduated tax on all business profits above a "normal" rate of return—at the center of wartime finance. Excess-profits taxation turned out to generate most of the tax revenues raised by the federal government during the war. Thus, wartime public finance depended heavily on the taxation of income that leading Democrats, including President Wilson, regarded as monopoly profits and therefore ill-gotten and socially hurtful."

Political sciences
"Esman asserts that regimes committed to the dominance of one communal group at the expense of another (or others) will "always use three methods of conflict management": 1) proscribe or closely control the political expression of collective interest among dominated groups, 2) prohibit entry by members of dominated groups into the dominant community, and 3) provide monopoly or preferential access for members of the dominant group to political participation, advanced education, economic opportunities, and symbols of status such as official language, the flag, national heroes, and holidays, which reinforce the political, economic, and psychic control of the dominant group." "Esman emphasizes that, though "basically coercive ..., a network of controls for maintaining hegemony is often highly sophisticated and deeply institutionalized."" "Control is a concept that plays a central role in the study of many political phenomena, but only one body of theory and empirical evidence has significantly influenced the study of control relations in deeply divided societies, namely, that associated with the study of overseas European imperialism."

Hypotheses
Topics include illegality and appropriate punishments.
 * 1) If a monopolist removes 100-1000 small competitive companies through illegal monopolistic practices thereby increasing its company's value and its own wealth accordingly, simply stating as punishment that it can no longer be CEO of the company it owns is ludicrous.
 * 2) If a bank robber makes off with $2 billion and gets caught, authorities usually don't let the thief keep the $2 billion.
 * 3) Insider trading by the top five or six executives of any publicly traded company is best when only allowing them to trade their stock and stock options with the company.