Comments on: How Much Bank Should A Big Bank Be?

By: Yaacov

Yaacov — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 03:12:33 +0000

Apple remains tiny compared to MS. The only place where MS has less than 50% of the market is the web browser, which is the area where the U.S. and E.U. governments took anti-monopoly action. There Apple has 6% while MS has 40%. MS has over 80% share in operating system and office suite markets. Here’s the data.
Web browser: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
Operation system: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8
Office Suite: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166123/forrester_microsoft_office_in_no_danger_from_competitors.html

MS is definitely still a monopoly.

By: Lukas

Lukas — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:57:58 +0000

Isn’t Apple a bigger player than Microsoft now? And sure MS might be hanging onto those 3 main products, but they definitely aren’t what they used to be.

By: Yaacov

Yaacov — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:59:14 +0000

How have Microsoft and IBM been put in their place by unregulated markets? MS still dominates the worldwide market in its three main products (operating system, browser, office suite) and IBM’s dominance was disrupted by technology change that made it’s main product (mainframes) obsolete. Unregulated markets haven’t broken up their monopolies.

By: Lukas

Lukas — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:19:26 +0000

Hmmm, I’ll have to see if I can find any really good examples, but quickly two examples I can think of are IBM and Microsoft. Two very large and powerful organizations who have been put in their place by the free market. It’s not that they are necessarily broken up, but lose market share to competition over time.

Also, usually it is government regulations that allow or create these powerful organizations in the first place, so there may not be any great examples in the free market because competition takes care of the situation before they get “too big too fail”.

By: Yaacov

Yaacov — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 16:47:24 +0000

Ok, so we agree on what needs to happen, just not how. Can you give me some historical examples of when unregulated markets have broken up large, powerful companies?

By: Lukas

Lukas — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 01:17:31 +0000

Yes, exactly, but not by any regulation or government doing. The free market will handle too big to fail.

By: Yaacov

Yaacov — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:51:48 +0000

Lukas, I think you’re agreeing that big banks should be broken up. Is that the case?

By: Lukas

Lukas — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:19:33 +0000

The free market tried to break them up and the government didn’t allow it and bailed them out. Now we should break them up? How about we just stop intervening and let the market sort it out.