They wont have to go below break-even to crush the competition due to the additional benefits of scale; there are things the incumbent will be able to afford to do that an upstart couldn’t.
By what mechanism do you decide who runs the government-owned monopoly-prone productions, and why shouldn’t it be a (bidding?) market with price commitments.
Whenever you propose a state-run alternative, you need to think about how they reliably hire competent people to run them. Can they ever really beat a mechanism that allows unknowns to step up and depose the incumbent the moment they can demonstrate that they can provide a more desirable product at a competitive price, because that seems like a pretty cool feature to me.
Now I feel a bit silly, because my comment wasn’t a new idea at all, but rather the reason why public utilities exist. So maybe looking at their history and performance is the best way to answer your questions.
They wont have to go below break-even to crush the competition due to the additional benefits of scale; there are things the incumbent will be able to afford to do that an upstart couldn’t.
By what mechanism do you decide who runs the government-owned monopoly-prone productions, and why shouldn’t it be a (bidding?) market with price commitments.
Whenever you propose a state-run alternative, you need to think about how they reliably hire competent people to run them. Can they ever really beat a mechanism that allows unknowns to step up and depose the incumbent the moment they can demonstrate that they can provide a more desirable product at a competitive price, because that seems like a pretty cool feature to me.
Now I feel a bit silly, because my comment wasn’t a new idea at all, but rather the reason why public utilities exist. So maybe looking at their history and performance is the best way to answer your questions.