This extreme is called a perfectly competitive market. In such a market there
is no need for individual firms to compete actively with one another
because none has any power over the market. One firm’s ability to sell its
product does not depend on the behaviour of any other firm. For
example, the Saskatchewan and Manitoba wheat farmers operate in a
perfectly competitive market over which they have no power. Neither can
change the market price for wheat by altering their own behaviour.
Visa “competes” very actively in the credit-card market against
MasterCard and American Express, but economists nonetheless refer to
the structure of this market as non-competitive.
Dick Hemingway Editorial Photographs