Monopolies Are Not for Ever

Big Tech companies are virtual monopolies and leftist economists want them to break up. However, such monopolies are temporary. New technology overtakes the old giants. The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P) in the US was a monopoly between 1920s and 1930s, but became bankrupt in 2010 on account of new technology and market forces. Nokia was dethroned from its monopoly in cell phones market by Apple. Kotak became history in cameras on account of digital photography. iTunes was superseded by Spotify and Pandora in music. New innovators killed the old giants. The original social media giant Myspace was ousted by Facebook

Facebook is experiencing falling share prices — from $400 a year ago to $93 today. It wants to enter metaverse market but has suffered a loss there. TikTok has adversely affected Instagram and YouTube. Amazon’s share prices have been reduced by almost a half in a year. Amazon has diversified from e-commerce to cloud services to maintain its profile. It has also entered entertainment, health services and autonomous cars. Apple too has experienced pressure, and a decline in share prices. Netflix does not make a surplus. It spends more cash than it earns. Google witnesses declining share prices. It is being fined heavily by the regulators. Market forces have affected it more than the the regulators. Its search engine faces competition from Bing and Alexa. It also has diversified into cloud services, autonomous cars, smart appliances and life sciences. Twitter has been losing money for eight successive years.

Innovator oust the existing leaders, which in turn are ousted by new innovators. It is not prudent to break them up. Let the market forces do the job. Liberalism fosters innovation and consumer benefits. The huge profits of monopolists are temporary.

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