Monopoly Profits

Summary of Monopoly Profits

An excess profit achieved by the monopolist as a result -according to William J. Miller- of monopolistic behavior. The effect is to make the marginal cost of production higher than necessary, thereby disrupting the allocation of resources through market forces.

Monopoly in 1889

The following information about Congress is from the Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and the Political History of the United States by the Best American and European Writers:

“Brodie, referring to the soap monopoly, constituted by Charles I. of England, says: “Almost every article of ordinary consumption, whether of manufacture or not, was exposed to a similar abuse: salt, starch, coals, iron, wine pens, cards and dice, beavers, pelts, bone-lace, etc., meat dressed in taverns, tobacco, wine casks, brewing and distilling, lampreys, weighing of hay and straw in London and Westminster, gauging of red herrings, butter casks, kelp and seaweed, linen cloth, rags, hops, buttons, hats, gutstring, spectacles, combs, tobacco pipes, etc., saltpetre, gunpowder, in short, articles down to the sole gathering of rags, were all under the fetters of monopolies, and consequently deeply taxed.” Of Queen Elizabeth’s system of monopolies Hume remarks that, had it been continued, the England of his day would have contained as little industry as Morocco or the coast of Barbary.”