- Joined
- Mar 11, 2006
- Messages
- 39,003
- Reaction score
- 14,343
- Location
- Denmark
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
What do Standard Oil, AT&T and Intel have in common?
None of them were monopolies, but the government treated them as such.
Standard oil used unfair business practices to achieve its near monopoly. This included murder, extortion and blackmail and good old fashioned beat the crap out of people.
AT&T was huge and a near monopoly too. You cant deny that. At the time it was one of the biggest companies in market share and price in the world. Now I can agree the splitting up of AT&T was a waste of time, because instead of one big company now you have regional monopolies that have put the US back in the telecommunications world. Lack of competitors and lack of willingness to do anything about it has put the US in certain areas no better than an up and coming telecommunication nations in Europe and the 3rd world.
Intel is a near monopoly too. No matter how you slice or dice it, Intel can trounce its very few competitors if it wanted to. When you sit on 70%+ of the market then you in reality own that market up to a degree. And if the company in question is not watched like a hawk for exploiting this massive market advantage in an anti competitive way then the company will do so.. we have seen it before and will see it again. And for the record, I am an Intel man because they have the superior product (for now).
Monopolies or near monopolies are in no ones interest regardless if it is an EU company, Japanese company or an American company. But I guess the nationalistic cloud of stupidity triumphs over logic and common sense yet again.