[Pierre]

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s a straw man argument unworthy of reply. My point is that billionaires arise from supernormal profits, which occurs in market failure.

Not necessarily, re, my points regarding tech giants ( which were just an example, other examples o/s tech apply equally)

Your leap that they should be “stripped of wealth” isn’t related to my point.

You don’t believe in wealth distribution then? You’re perfectly fine with Gates and Jobs and their Estates keeping all that wealth?

Also I didn’t say this wasn’t happening, I said BT benefit from the existing state funded infrastructure. That’s a statement of fact, regardless of what investment may (or may not) be taking place.

did they benefit from not starting from zero - yes I will give you that, but they inherited an aged out of date lemon, that they have sweated that they cannot sweat anymore.

Conversely, the Virgin Media Network was built, and is still built, totally on private finance. What should we do with “ billionaire” John malone? The telecoms market isn’t failed. It’s thriving. Is he allowed to keep his billions? He hasn’t raped any state assets. In the.com bubble many millionaires and billionaires lost millions and billions ..... no bail out for them. When you risk all and can lose all, why not take all when you win?

Irrelevant to my point. There’s so many straw men here you could have a rugby team.

So we’re clear, all these “billionaires” profiting off the back of previous nationalised sectors...and you can come up with zero.

No. Perfect competition works in principle. Where a large number of suppliers offer directly comparable products

I know you’re an expert in “economic theory”

But let’s look at directly comparable products. Let’s look at apples.

Apples are apples. But I breed apple trees that produce more apples, and bigger apples than my competitors. I also devise a way to harvest the apples quicker and cheaper.

Now I can sell my apples cheaper than my competitors, for the same profit, perhaps more. I make so much money I buy my competitors orchards but they’re not as efficient as mine so I shut them down. Now i’m The biggest, if not the only , apple producer in the region. Now I can set my price etc etc etc.

It’s all about innovation, doing it quicker, larger and cheaper than your competitor.

If the barrier to entry is building a £30bn fibre network, I don’t think my mates and I can just go down to the bank in the morning and set up our own broadband company.

You lack vision. There are at least a dozen or more regional alt-nets that have secured government and private finance and are building FTTP networks right now. Real speculators and entrepreneurs, the wealth creators socialists hate.