earticle

영어

Korea is engulfed everyday by uproar of thousands of citizens against U.S. beef imports in
May 2008. The textbook of economics always teaches that trade can make everyone better
off. Regardless of this principle, the everyday uproar of beef imports leads to the situation of
anarchy. This shows evidently how difficult it is to get them to understand logics of market economy order and competition from their hearts. To a certain extent this difficulty should result from the somewhat distorted and false interpretation about competition and monopoly. Economists should at least be responsible for providing an accurate knowledge about the essentials of the disciplines of market economy.
This paper aims to provide a valuable appraisal of crucial aspects of market, competition
and monopoly which differs from the textbook of economic principles which is dominated by
Marshallian and Keynesian paradigm. This paper is based on the thoughts of Austrian School,
especially Hayekian and Misesian paradigm. Market economy is a spontaneous order of a collaboration of free human actions. It is not the result of human design. This implies that a free
market economy can be interpreted and understood in the best way only by analysing human
behaviors and circumstances which set the limit of human actions, stressing knowledge and
discovery. The Austrians adhere to these paradigms. It is the reason why this paper on the
topic of competition and monopoly is written in the Austrian school's perspectives Despite all the criticism given on the model of perfect competition, it still occupies the starting point of all the positive and normative discussions. In fact, perfect competition is a sleeping competition. There is no competition at all. This has virtually ignored the role of competition in the market. As a result, it makes lots of students sketch the real market falsely and leads to the inaccurate interpretation of competition. Competition is a process of knowledge exchange between buyers and sellers. It is interpreted as a voyage of exploration and discovery into the unknown, too. It is also a process of differentiation through which one discovers his own best advantage that others have not. Therefore it could not be said that competition is inhumane. Interpreting competition like that, we can observe and understand the vitality of a real dynamic market process.
There can be no monopoly or monopoly price on the free market. Monopoly can be defined
only as a grant of privilege by the state. Monopoly price can not be distinguished at all from
competitive price, because there is no discernable and identifiable competitive price. There is
also no grounds that monopoly diminishes social welfare. The profit comes from the differences
of the product and production factor. All profit should return not to the entrepreneur but to the
production factors that enable to attain the profit.

한국어

본 연구의 목적은 시장경제와 관련된 핵심적인 몇 가지 개념들을 통념적인 의미와는 다르게 해석하여 시장경제의 본질을 이해하는 데 도움을 주고자 하는 데 있다. 본 논문에서 다루어질 개념은 시장과 경쟁 그리고 독점이며 이들의 개념 이해를 오스트리안 경제학자들의 시각에서 정리하고 해석하였다. 시장은 교환의 상징적 표현에 불과하며, 시장은 개인의 자발적 거래로 형성된 질서이다. 따라서 시장은 무엇을 의도하지 않기 때문에 시장 실패라는 용어는 잘못된 것이다. 경쟁은 지식의 교환과 평행 과정이고 미지로의 탐험이며 조정과 혁신의 과정이다. 또한 경쟁은 승패의 과정이 아니라 차별화의 과정이며 각자의 능력과 장점을 발견해 주는 절차이기도 하다. 따라서 경쟁이 비인간적이고 냉혹한 과정이란 편입 견
을 버려야 한다. 모든 제품과 생산요소는 소비자의 위치와 판매되는 시공간의 차이에 의해 동일하지 않다. 그렇다면 독점이란 처음부터 존재하지 않으며 시장을 완전경쟁, 독점, 불완전경쟁, 과점 등으로 분류하여 분석하는 것은 의미가 없다. 완전경쟁은 현실에서 존재하지 않기 때문에 누구도 경쟁가격을 모른다. 그렇다면 경쟁가격과의 비교로부터 나오는 독점가격도 존재하지 않는 개념이다.