Look at the platform antitrust from the punishment of HowNet!

Look at the platform antitrust from the punishment of HowNet!

The punishment of HowNet should be a major event of platform antitrust in 2022. But before this incident was exposed, there should be a large number of people who didn't know that HowNet had monopolistic behavior!

What monopolistic behaviors does HowNet involve?

1. monopolize high prices. Because HowNet is basically in a monopoly position on the academic platform, users are charged a high usage fee, mainly for some universities, but universities cannot replace HowNet with other platforms.

2. Infringement of the author's rights and interests, many authors said that they did not receive the manuscript fee paid by HowNet, and the platform monopolized profits.

3. Obstruct the spread of knowledge, and prevent subscribers, such as schools, from authorizing the use of periodicals and data to third parties, thus forming an island of knowledge, which is not conducive to the spread of knowledge.

Significance of anti-monopoly

Many times monopoly is inefficient, so anti-monopoly is meaningful from the perspective of economic efficiency. The Internet platform has developed rapidly in recent years, but with the expansion of its scale, it will naturally start to monopolize. For ordinary people, they obtain personal data information through monopoly position, so that they can discriminate prices according to specific users. For example, for some people who are judged to have higher spending power, they may see higher prices than others. This is the so-called big data killing.

This has an impact on the welfare of consumers, although first-class price discrimination is efficient! For an enterprise, in order to maintain its monopoly position, it may merge with small enterprises, or for example, a new model appears, which may pose a threat. Monopoly enterprises choose to knock down challengers by adopting strategies such as monopoly position and low-price competition. From the point of view of efficiency, the measures taken by monopoly manufacturers to maintain their position are a complete waste of resources, which is unfavorable to the whole society and may hinder innovation.

Some benefits of monopoly

This is in stark contrast to some of the above viewpoints. Some monopoly enterprises may be conducive to innovation. First of all, the scale of monopoly enterprises is relatively large, and sometimes there will be scale effect in technology research and development. Monopoly enterprises have sufficient funds for continuous financial support, which is incomparable to small enterprises. In order to maintain their monopoly position, monopoly enterprises must constantly innovate, otherwise they may be squeezed by challengers, so their motivation for innovation may be stronger than that under perfect competition! Of course, monopoly enterprises may waste resources in order to maintain their monopoly position, and at the same time, they are vigorously innovating, so we need to prevent monopoly enterprises from wasting resources in order to maintain their monopoly position.

We should establish a standardized legal system, such as the anti-monopoly law promulgated by the state, but it does not mean that there must be benefits without monopoly at all. For example, our discrimination against patent protection is to protect monopoly, but it is beneficial to the market. Strengthen the supervision of monopoly and unfair competition! A complete legal system and an effective supervision system are very important for anti-monopoly!

Some benefits of monopoly

This is in stark contrast to some of the above viewpoints. Some people's monopoly may still be conducive to innovation First of all, the scale of monopoly enterprises is relatively large, and sometimes there will be scale effect in technology research and development, and monopoly enterprises have sufficient funds for continuous financial support.

This is beyond the reach of small enterprises. In order to protect themselves

Monopoly position, monopoly enterprises must constantly innovate, otherwise they may be squeezed by challengers, so

Its innovation power may be more than that under perfect competition.

Make it worse! Of course, monopoly enterprises may waste resources in order to maintain their monopoly position, and at the same time, they are vigorously innovating, so we need to prevent monopoly enterprises from wasting resources in order to maintain their monopoly position.