Quote:OPEC is not a monopoly either, but sudden increases and decreases in supply can heavily affect the market (e.g. Chip dumping). The government doesn't need to remain profitable, so it can use the power of production and price control to manipulate and blackmail the market.No. OPEC is not quite a monopoly, but they have market power. They control enough of a scarce natural resource that they can affect prices.
GM does not have market power. If they lower production, there are a dozen companies across three continents that will step up to fill the breach. It's a manufactured product, which makes it much harder to gain market power. A GM production stoppage would be solved by other companies within a couple years, and that would be the end of the fruitless attempt to control production that way.
How would blackmail work? They could overproduce, and drive everyone else out of the market. But foreign companies would still have their production infrastructure. Unless GM wants to try to corner the global auto market on the taxpayer's dollar, that's a hopeless game. They could under produce, but other companies would just step in to fill the breach. They have no ability to alter the elasticity of demand.
-Jester