<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>sfifs</author><text>In any free market, the giant incumbent will either buy out or copy and squelch startups that threaten them unless restricted by anti trust. Witness how Facebook treats competition in the social space. Or how Oracle treats the database space. Or how Microsoft funded Apple&amp;#x27;s survival and Intel ensured AMDs.&lt;p&gt;If there are sufficiently few rules and an lack of power in the government to enforce (Korea, Japan, Italy), giants may use corruption or organised crime to achieve this.&lt;p&gt;Less powerful governments are rarely a good solution to protect the small man. The right solution is to build checks and balances between the different wings of the government that make it difficult to &amp;quot;capture&amp;quot; all wings.</text><parent_chain><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Monopolies are granted by governments. The free market has a natural solution to monopolies, it&amp;#x27;s called competition - startups.&lt;p&gt;Big Cos will always lobby governments to add rules and regulation to raise the barrier of entry on their market and thus reduce competition.&lt;p&gt;They, in fact, buy their monopoly from the government.&lt;p&gt;Solution? Take away the government&amp;#x27;s ability to grant monopolies.</text></item><item><author>sfifs</author><text>Those with wealth will always try to capture the system - whether its formal or informal. The natural state of any business is to try and become a monopoly because that maximizes rent taking ability - NOT competition.&lt;p&gt;Practically the ONLY power able to stop monopolies from forming is the government. In absence of the government&amp;#x27;s ability to &amp;quot;meddle&amp;quot;, businesses can and will cut deals with big competitors and squelch smaller ones through anti competitive practices to dominate</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>By default, big companies always get preferential treatment from governments. Open a mega-factory? They get tax cuts, cheap real estate, free utilities. Why? Those shiny new jobs look great on a politician&amp;#x27;s resume for the next election...&lt;p&gt;What does the little business guy get? A letter of &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t forget to pay your taxes in full or else&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s time to accept the fact that governments are NOT a fair and impartial warden of the economy. Therein lies the problem. Reducing their power of meddling in the economy is the solution.</text></item><item><author>styx31</author><text>What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can&amp;#x27;t evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate.&lt;p&gt;But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies&amp;#x2F;holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate.&lt;p&gt;So, what? The tax rate of a country is now &amp;quot;artificial&amp;quot;, because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because the higher profiles will be able to evade a part of it.&lt;p&gt;If governments want to reclaim more, they could raise up the tax rate, considering that the biggest players will only pay a fragment of it. But the small companies, the one that can only follow the rules? They are screwed.&lt;p&gt;All companies should be considered equals regarding the tax system. It is simply not the case when such schemes are used.&lt;p&gt;Edit: exactly the same point of view as jitbit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15651457&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15651457&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook</title><url>https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/dear-tim-cook-e322998/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>pjc50</author><text>This is a reductionist view that ignores economies of scale, real barriers to entry, the actual requirement for regulation for most markets to function, not to mention basic safety.&lt;p&gt;Or are you campaigning for the abolition of patents as a concept?</text><parent_chain><item><author>nickpp</author><text>Monopolies are granted by governments. The free market has a natural solution to monopolies, it&amp;#x27;s called competition - startups.&lt;p&gt;Big Cos will always lobby governments to add rules and regulation to raise the barrier of entry on their market and thus reduce competition.&lt;p&gt;They, in fact, buy their monopoly from the government.&lt;p&gt;Solution? Take away the government&amp;#x27;s ability to grant monopolies.</text></item><item><author>sfifs</author><text>Those with wealth will always try to capture the system - whether its formal or informal. The natural state of any business is to try and become a monopoly because that maximizes rent taking ability - NOT competition.&lt;p&gt;Practically the ONLY power able to stop monopolies from forming is the government. In absence of the government&amp;#x27;s ability to &amp;quot;meddle&amp;quot;, businesses can and will cut deals with big competitors and squelch smaller ones through anti competitive practices to dominate</text></item><item><author>nickpp</author><text>By default, big companies always get preferential treatment from governments. Open a mega-factory? They get tax cuts, cheap real estate, free utilities. Why? Those shiny new jobs look great on a politician&amp;#x27;s resume for the next election...&lt;p&gt;What does the little business guy get? A letter of &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t forget to pay your taxes in full or else&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s time to accept the fact that governments are NOT a fair and impartial warden of the economy. Therein lies the problem. Reducing their power of meddling in the economy is the solution.</text></item><item><author>styx31</author><text>What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can&amp;#x27;t evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate.&lt;p&gt;But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies&amp;#x2F;holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate.&lt;p&gt;So, what? The tax rate of a country is now &amp;quot;artificial&amp;quot;, because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because the higher profiles will be able to evade a part of it.&lt;p&gt;If governments want to reclaim more, they could raise up the tax rate, considering that the biggest players will only pay a fragment of it. But the small companies, the one that can only follow the rules? They are screwed.&lt;p&gt;All companies should be considered equals regarding the tax system. It is simply not the case when such schemes are used.&lt;p&gt;Edit: exactly the same point of view as jitbit: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15651457&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15651457&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook</title><url>https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/paradisepapers/politik/dear-tim-cook-e322998/</url></story>