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A better functioning government would break up these conglomerates as they operate like cartels, price fixing and gouging and colluding with each other, all at consumer expense, while simultaneously watering down product offerings to their worst versions.
This is NOT the free market.
What are you talking about, this is the natural conclusion of a free market.
Sure, sans regulation. The point of govt regulations is to ensure that platforms that control two sided markets are not given complete largesse to fleece the participants. It's ultimately a defeating strategy with diminishing returns, as both producers and consumers lack the necessary surplus required to participate AND to invest/reinvest resources toward long term growth. Another reason that stock buy-backs used to be illegal.
And obviously you can probably guess I believe they should be illegal again.
I completely agree with you that the results (monopolies and oligopolies) are undesirable, and you're doing a great job of explaining why the results are undesirable. But you're not explaining why you think monopolies and oligopolies are not the natural outcome of a free market. The free market is not a good thing.
I agreed that they are the natural outcome, in the absence of effective regulation. Sans means without.
Capitalism inherently concentrates wealth, and as wealth concentrates, it builds upon itself while seeking out novel opportunities to deepen influence. We see this phenomenon in modern economic scenarios as individuals gain the ability to co-opt political forces, and create larger and larger wealth watersheds.
In other words, the existence of billionaires is a symptom of a broken system- one that has NOT effectively been regulated. They become monopolistic entities unto themselves. Billionaire brands then gain further leverage via network effects, creating a snowball that only government intervention can safely defuse. It doesn't matter if one billionaire is "good," nor one politician. As Edwards Deming famously said, "a bad system will beat a good person, every time."
I totally agree, broken system and all. Still a free market. The free market is inherently a broken system.
You mean to say there's only a few mega corporations controlling all of capitalism? Who would have thunk!? /s
If only someone had warned us in 1867, 1885, and 1894!