> If a conglomerate has a dominate position in a marketplace, doesn't its administration face many of the same problems and challenges just like a central planner? In this situation, from a technical perspective, which are the similarities and differences here?
Yes they do. the differences are that they are still dependent on goods that their own firm doesn't produce, so the prices of those goods discipline their budget/plans to some degree, the firm is unable to use violence to compel the behavior they need to survive, and that as they call victim to the same central planning problems as governments, their marginal profit decreases so that the owner sees less profit and the price of a share of ownership decreases because of that.
But they can use violence. By capturing control of the state and shifting state policy to coerce in its favour. Or failing that, employing violence directly themselves as many large monopolies did in the 20s and 30s.
As an aside, I see this as the fundamental point of departure in language between a Marxian socialist and a libertarian-capitalist, they mean two different things by the "state": libertarians believe the state is a parasite on the market and a corrupter and destroyer of the free market. Marxists believe that the state is created _by_ the market for itself ("The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.") Both see the other as hopelessly naive.
> Marxists believe that the state is created _by_ the market for itself
I don't think that is accurate.
Marxists believe that in practice bourgeois control of the State (in the developmental phase of capitalism, bourgeois influence on the aristocracy which controls the State) is the vehicle by which the bourgeois create and maintain the system of private property of which the market is an epiphenomenon. (And, therefore, that control of the State is necessary to abolish that system of property rights and the capitalist system that depends on it.)
On the descriptive points of this libertarian capitalists generally agree (disagreeing on the normative assessment); seeing that the purpose of the state is to enforce the system of property rights that the market relies on, and that the State is defective to the extent that it extends beyond or departs from that function.
> On the descriptive points of this libertarian capitalists generally agree (disagreeing on the normative assessment); seeing that the purpose of the state is to enforce the system of property rights that the market relies on, and that the State is defective to the extent that it extends beyond or departs from that function.
Some see the state as a capture of the dispute resolution process and feel that the market emerges as a consequence of certain norms.
> But they can use violence. By capturing control of the state and shifting state policy to coerce in its favour. Or failing that, employing violence directly themselves as many large monopolies did in the 20s and 30s.
This is true but in functional terms the corporation is then acting with the powers of a government or organized crime, and then is subject to the same arguments that are used to explain the failures/successes of those systems.
> Marxists believe that the state is created _by_ the market for itself
This is somewhat true. Its important to note that it is created or captured by certain market participants, not the market as a whole.
Yes they do. the differences are that they are still dependent on goods that their own firm doesn't produce, so the prices of those goods discipline their budget/plans to some degree, the firm is unable to use violence to compel the behavior they need to survive, and that as they call victim to the same central planning problems as governments, their marginal profit decreases so that the owner sees less profit and the price of a share of ownership decreases because of that.