The monopoly myth
Last Thursday night, I delivered my talk “The Monopoly Myth: The Case of Standard Oil,” at USC. The theme of the talk was that John D. Rockefeller, the textbook example of the destructiveness of Big Business and market dominance, was in fact an incredible wealth creator who dominated simply because his company created better, cheaper, oil products than anyone else. I argued that Rockefeller’s 90% market share was just as earned as Michael Phelps’s eight gold medals.
The audience asked a lot of good questions after the talk, from whether “predatory pricing” is a problem, to how to properly define “monopoly,” to what a truly free market in health care would look like.
For anyone who’s in Southern California and interested, I’ll be delivering the same talk at the Hilton in Costa Mesa, CA on February 19, followed by a Q&A where I’ll be joined by Yaron Brook. For those of you outside Southern California, the talk should be available online at www.aynrandcenter.org soon after.
And for those of you who are particularly interested in economic and antitrust issues, you can find a detailed historical and economic analysis of the Standard Oil case in my essay “Vindicating Capitalism: The Real History of the Standard Oil Company” in the Summer 2008 issue of The Objective Standard.
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