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Hello and welcome to Better Offline.

I'm your host at Zittron.

Today we're talking monopolies, and I'm joined by Matt Stola, who covers market power and antitrust for the big newsletter, and is the director of research at the American Economic Libertese Project. Matt, thank you for joining me.

Hey, thanks for having me. So, this is a very dumb place to start, but I think it's necessary.

What exactly is a monopoly?

Not a dumb place to start at all.

There are different definitions, but generally speaking, it is the control of a recognized branch of trade or service, a unified control of recognized

trade or service.

And that's a definition I'm giving you from Louis Brandeis, who was a Supreme Court justice.

But it's the same, I think Milton Friedman had a kind of a similar definition.

The essence of a monopoly is control of a market or a recognized trade.

And what do most people not actually understand about them?

What I think most people characterize monopoly as kind of an economic thing or, you know,

just a commercial thing.

But really a monopoly is a political institution. So when we're

talking about monopolies, we're talking about what is effectively a private government over a market,

over an industry. If you're in that trade, right, or that service, if you apply your trade there, if you're

operating in a market which is monopolized, then you have a political boss who sets the prices,

the terms of trade, who can buy, who can sell, and you're under their thumb.

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