 any competition or market process would even be possible with this definitional approach. How could any competition occur if all resources are monopolized?
Even if it were to be assumed for the moment that resources are not uniquely specific and are, instead, completely homogeneous, additional difficulties remain. Why, for instance, ought monopoly ownership to preclude the possibility of competition from potentially rivalrous entrepreneurs that purchase needed resources? Indeed, Kirzner himself has already stated that the market process is "always" competitive so long as there is freedom to buy and sell in the market.31 Even monopoly ownership does not erase the freedom to buy and sell since it is possible that access to resources could be obtained, say, through purchase. Yet Kirzner argues that the "very possibilities themselves" of competition may be eliminated by monopoly ownership of a resource.32
Another difficulty with Professor Kirzner's approach is his use of the qualifying term, "current endowment of a certain resource."33 Obviously, nothing prevents potentially rivalrous entrepreneurs from exploring for and exploiting new supplies of a specific resource. Indeed, "current endowment" of a resource is an ambiguous phrase since supplies of resources are normally classified as "proved," "probable," and "possible."
If Kirzner means to imply that a monopoly over the current proved endowment of a particular resource precludes the possibility of competition and allows the resource owner to be "immune from entrepreneurial competition," 34 he would be arguing a tenuous point at best. Clearly such a "monopoly" allows no such thing. In this example, future 35 entry is clearly possible and cannot be precluded a priori. And since the entire Austrian tradition in this area is to treat the competitive process as one that unfolds through time anyway, how are the potential entrepreneurs effectively blocked from "discovering unexploited opportunities for profit"?
As a final point, monopoly over a resource would appear to make rational economic calculation difficult (if not impossible) since no "market" would then exist for the resource. 36 Without markets economic calculation is impossible since objective prices cannot be determined. A firm that monopolized "oranges" for instance, would have no objective way of knowing, subsequently, whether it was employing its resources efficiently in the production of "orange juice," or even whether it ought to be producing orange juice at all. This "definition" of monopoly, therefore, would appear to be operationally self-destructive. The monopoly position would tend to generate inevitable irrationalities in production since entrepreneurs would have no objective way to calculate "costs."
Mises, it will be recalled, realized the inherent difficulties of defining monopoly, and so he moved on to the catallactic significance of monopoly: obtaining the monopoly price and, thus, frustrating "the wishes of the consumers." Professor Kirzner, although he denies that the elasticity of the demand function has any bearing whatever on whether a monopoly exists or not, nonetheless does argue that resource monopoly is likely to result in a restricted employment of such resources, higher prices, and larger surpluses for the producer employing the resource.37 Importantly, such ownership (at least in the short run) has "harmful effects" since it creates an incentive "for not using a scarce resource to the fullest extent compatible with the pattern of consumer's tastes in the market."38
It is really difficult to see, however, why any of this argument necessarily follows. The "pattern of consumer tastes in the market" would appear to be, simply, consumer demand. Consumer demand is the variable amount of some homogeneous stock that consumers would be willing and able to purchase at various prices. The important point to be made here is that in a free market such "demand" determinations by consumers are completely voluntary on their part, and all price-output combinations on that hypothetical function faithfully r