I’ve been thinking about how that would have to work. The idea of monopoly power is that it allows you to exert distortionary pressure on a market. Someone who straps me to a chair, forces my mouth open and feeds me grapefruit doesn’t hold a monopoly over what I eat; they’re forcibly coercing me.
The only way I can immediately think of someone having monopoly power over what went into my mouth is if they owned my mouth, or rented a mouth out for me to eat with, (or talk, or do whatever it is I like to do with my mouth), and their enforceable terms of service stipulated I could only eat certain things.
That’s just forcible coercion, not exercising monopoly power.
Monopoly is about being able to charge higher prices for inferior products because you’re the only supplier in town, not because you’re the only one with a gun.
Gastro-weirdtopia.
I’ve been thinking about how that would have to work. The idea of monopoly power is that it allows you to exert distortionary pressure on a market. Someone who straps me to a chair, forces my mouth open and feeds me grapefruit doesn’t hold a monopoly over what I eat; they’re forcibly coercing me.
The only way I can immediately think of someone having monopoly power over what went into my mouth is if they owned my mouth, or rented a mouth out for me to eat with, (or talk, or do whatever it is I like to do with my mouth), and their enforceable terms of service stipulated I could only eat certain things.
That’s actually genuinely horrifying.
What if it was a monopoly of your past-self, using some sort of implant as an anti-akrasia dieting mechanism?
That’s just forcible coercion, not exercising monopoly power.
Monopoly is about being able to charge higher prices for inferior products because you’re the only supplier in town, not because you’re the only one with a gun.