What is a monopoly: a monopoly is the exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market. For example famous monopolies include Andrew Carnegie's steel company which in the 1900s was responsible for almost all the steel production in the world and John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil company which responsible for almost all the United States production of oil. In their time these two companies were a few of the biggest ever.
During America's Progressive Era, large monopolies controlled the industries in which they did business, increasing the economy and harming the people. Monopolies were a big thing during the progressive era. A monopoly is when one person or business owns a product that they can only sell and produce. For example, a big industry like oil used to be owned by the Rockefellers, and they were the only ones who could sell oil in America. According to the Newsela article "Entrepreneurs: John D. Rockefeller," "Standard Oil continued to spread."
In fact, the
Another unpleasant side affect of the sudden industrial boom was the rise of trusts and monopolies. Both were severely detrimental to workers, as well as to consumers. For this reason, the government had a responsibility to break up prominent monopolies, such as the one held by Standard Oil. A trust forms when a company has control of several other companies in the same business. When that company controls all other companies in the same industry, the trust becomes
Jay Gatsby was a handsome, rich man who lived in a huge mansion in the Long Island village of West Egg. Gatsby was a dreamer who always envisioned a bigger lifestyle than he grew up on. Gatsby had two main ways of making his income, and that was through an alcohol business and buying several pharmacies. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gatsby had two American dreams. The first was to be very rich and successful and the second was to be married and have a life with Daisy.
State of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers. Meaning the market only has a handful of companies functioning in the same structure. The substitution of a product for another product or one vehicle for another it is completely possible in an Oligopoly market only from one of the few companies in the Oligopoly market structure. In the United States these companies would include Ford, GM, and Chrysler (Grunert n.d.). It is extremely difficult for any new Company wanting to enter into an Oligopoly market structure.
The freedoms that are hindered by these entities are the freedom to enter or not enter into a particular transaction by denying them any alternative and the freedom to not be affected by transactions in which you do not partake (Friedman, 1975). A monopoly deprives the consumer of the freedom of exchange; the consumer is forced to transact with a sole seller. Monopolies themselves come in different forms and deciding which monopoly will do less harm to the people, the monopolies need to be studied on a case-by-case basis. Most monopolies can be dealt with anti-trust laws to prevent them from coming to existence. Furthermore some monopolies need the government to stop supporting them in order to terminate its existence.
