Competition and Monopoly

Do free markets naturally tend toward monopoly, requiring antitrust to keep them honest? Tate Fegley makes the Austrian case that the whole framework is backwards. The neoclassical ideal of "perfect competition" defines away real competition—advertising, undercutting, innovating—and treats it as evidence of monopoly. Following Rothbard, Fegley argues the only coherent monopoly is one granted by the state, and works through the antitrust consequences, from Lina Khan's case against Amazon to the courts punishing Alcoa for serving customers too well.Recorded at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, on July 21, 2026.Mises University is the world's leading instructional program in the Austrian School of economics, and is the essential training ground for economists who are looking beyond the mainstream.