I well recall my daddy explaining to me during my high school days why business monopolies are frequently a bad thing -- and why the government had to take steps to make them illegal in many cases.
And when I went on to college, that was reinforced. And when I got my first job in a bank, that law was what kept banks domiciled in, say, Texas, from having branches in Louisiana and Kentucky and California.
Well over the past forty years those laws have been picked at and amended and watered down until they are not only impotent but have little value. It's how we have Walmarts and Wells Fargo Banks and enormous brokerage houses that are now public corporations rather than partnerships as they were back in the days when it was Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith.
You are all familiar with the toll the American economy is taking now, a very serious toll that would be a blip if it weren't for monopolies.
Here's another that is closer to home: There are three major carpet manufacturers in the US. They have systematically acquired the names and good will of smaller mills, so that often times while the public thinks it is buying a premium brand and paying the price for it, it is just buying carpet from one of those three manufacturers.
So you pay the premium price. You're told that brand of carpet has a reputation and warranty for being so good that if anything happens to it that is unsatisfactory within the first ten years, it will be replaced.
That warranty may have some teeth in it if your retailer was one of the home improvement monopolies like Lowes and Home Depot, but it is nothing more than a blip if your retailer is a local store.
The local stores turn in the claim, but they have no leverage whatsoever over the mills. So what's the bottom line here? One monopoly supports another monopoly. The customer loses if he negotiates his carpet purchase from his neighbor's store and it turns out to be faulty goods.
See how many examples of why monopolies are a bad thing......
