Doug Henwood wrote: > How do we know there's been a sharper concentration? Thirty years ago, > there were three major players in the U.S. auto market; now there are what, > 5 or 10? Firstly: remember that the large auto corporations are TNCs which produce and sell autos in many different national markets. Secondly: yes, the statistics on concentration in the world auto industry will show that it is increasingly concentrated. > Another question - did the textbook world of perfect competition ever > really exist? Or has something like oligpolistic competition been the only > real historically existing kind? Perfect competition is a historical fiction -- although, it is certainly true that markets in general used to be more competitive in the classical sense at earlier periods of capitalist history. Jerry
