Discrimination In The Free Marketplace

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For example, when the phone companies were a regulated monopoly; the companies rarely hired African Americans before the enactment of civil rights laws. The companies paid for this discrimination by passing along the costs associated with it, to all of the consumers that used telephones. Since they were a regulated monopoly there were no competitors providing substitute services, which would normally have pulled down the price curve and incentivized less discriminatory policies. Ironically, if the companies had not chosen to discriminate, their costs would have probably been lower, making it theoretically possible that they could have increased their monopoly profit margin. However, they had little incentive to do this because the government also regulated their profit margin; so they would not obtain any of the excess profits that they could have theoretically generated. Consequently, the phone companies had no incentive to change, and thus were able to discriminate with relative impunity without any threat of profit loss. It is important to note that such motives were not shared by other industries during …show more content…
When a premises is rent-controlled, the rental rate cannot be arbitrarily changed outside of specific changes endorsed be the regulating authority. In the free market a landlord loses income the longer an apartment remains vacant. Therefore, in the free market, landlords generally have less incentive to discriminate against potential renters. However, when the rent is controlled, would-be renters are more incentivized to pursue such options so as to minimize the risk associated with potential increases in their cost of living. This creates a surplus of applicants for the landlords to choose from that allows them to arbitrarily discriminate against various groups if they are so