I think there needs to be natural monopolies that wan with time, if you want the whole pie it causes innovation, if you can only get a slice of the pie it stagnates innovation.
There is couple easy bits in this:
First, natural monopolies exist. This is not because you want so - unless you control nature ;) - but it is just so.
Second, monopolies - natural or not - are certainly not a cause for innovation. I mean this is very easy to understand: If you are the only one who has something why bother working your butt off day and night to make it better? You'd rather just harvest the tree you have exclusive and enjoy life.
Third, Intel is no monopoly. This is also easy, because it is not the only one which has X86-CPUs to offer.
From here on, my pretty, things really are a bit complicated. Just couple of days ago this years Nobel Price for economics has been awarded to three chaps contributing to a better understanding of these things (which btw is the field i plow). Now, Nobel Price Commitee is not particularly fast. Hurwicz' most valuable contribution is 35 years old - and he started publishing some twenty years before this. However, Nobel Price Commitee is still way ahead of economics commonly teached. It will take another century or two until the works honoured this year will be common opinion - and at least the same time for lawmakers to adopt it, and some more for courts to rule so. This is not wrong - but just the way it is - and ever was, just because things really are a bit complicated and people only can learn as fast as they can. I consider this natural as well and so it's all fine. There is always attempts to accelerate nature - they all fail. This is good - trial and error is a way to learn. A baby just takes ten months to deliver. This is the lesson to learn. As simple as that.
K.
Facts are irrelevant to the emotional brain
