Ever since the illustrious Industrial Revolution, monopolies have been a constant and evolving problem in the United States due to its free market system. Business magnates such as John D. Rockefeller made millions by buying out competitors, inflating prices, and taking complete control over every fine detail of their respective industries. (Poole) Since then, antitrust laws have been passed into legislation to prevent such injustice, but people have been able to find ways around them. One of these people is co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates. The public has denounced Gates for years because of his anti-competition practices, and he can be considered as one of the most prominent monopolists of the modern day. From a young age, Gates was a fiercely intelligent boy with a passion for computers, which would help him in the success he would achieve in his adult years. Along with his friend and partner Paul Allen, he mastered nearly every piece of computer hardware and software that was available at the time. This exponential and continuous growth in his youth could be contrasted to the abundance of job promotions and early success of Andrew Carnegie, another well-known entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolution who was able to monopolize the steel industry in its infancy to make a fortune. Bill Gates and Paul Allen …show more content…
Microsoft however, had earned a reputation as one of the wealthiest and most successful companies in America. They proceeded to buy SCA’s DOS license for $925,000. They had also bought the DOS license belonging to the original creator of the operating system, Tim Paterson, for one million dollars. (Poole, William H. Gates) This elimination of competition through large payments of cash is a common practice among monopolists, and becomes way too easy to do once their corporations rise in power and