It is time the public become more aware of the monopolistic behavior of American business that has a strangle hold on the economy of the U.S. The key to capitalism that it works to the benefit of the public/consumer and that monopolistic behavior must be stopped when it occurs to protect the public. The enforcement of laws must take place to prevent monopolies from developing and protect smaller businesses from aggressive larger businesses that seek to create ever expanding monopiles. Often these monopolies seem to grow unfettered even considering laws have been in place for decades to prevent monopolies from growing so that one or a few companies control a segment of the economy.
Most Americans over the age of 50 can remember when most communities the size of Devils Lake had two or three locally owned grocery stores, a handful of locally owned hardware stores and other locally owned retail stores. Big department stores, now called big box stores, were in the larger cities. Mail order was left to Sears, JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, and other national or regional retailers.
In 1982 there was a legal case against AT&T for its monopolistic behavior that controlled a large segment of the telephone market that resulted in the breakup of AT&T into smaller companies that lessened their control over the telephone industry in the U.S. There have been several notable anti-trust cases during U.S. history that often benefited the people of the U.S and overall economic wellbeing of the country. Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act almost unanimously in 1890 to address monopolistic behavior of a small number of railroad barons, and it remains the core of antitrust policy. In the early years of the 20th century Standard Oil was universally disliked by the American people for their monopolistic behavior and several actions were taken including the formation of the Federal Trade Commission and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1914. During the early part of the 20th century several presidents used the tools available to them to sue many companies such as Standard Oil, Merican Tobacco, United States Steel, International Harvester, National Cash Register, Westinghouse, General Electric, Kodak, and Dupont for their monopolistic behavior.
After this progressive era when litigation was used somewhat effectively most antitrust actions involved negotiated settlements between the government that alleged monopolistic behavior, and the company accused of such a violation. Just recently Google was found guilty of monopolistic behavior by colluding with Apple, who is also in court for monopolistic misdeeds. Perhaps we may be entering an era of renewed actions against companies that want to control certain segments of the U.S. economy and tech companies are prime targets.
There are six large corporations (Albertson, Amazon, Kroger, Costco, Walmart, Target) that basically control most grocery stores throughout the country. There are several smaller regional corporations in less populated areas of the country, like Leever’s in Devils Lake, that have survived independently. However, sometime in the future one of these six behemoths will decide to acquire these smaller regional companies, it is only a matter of time. Some day in the future Leevers will become one of many subsidiary corporations, possibly remaining Leever’s, owned by one of the six segment controlling behemoths.
The greater a segment of the economy is monopolized by one or a small handful of companies the greater the likelihood of higher prices in the products produced or sold beyond what would be expected based on the specific costs to produce or acquire the products for public consumption. The true story behind our recent bout with inflation is that there was a good deal of price gouging going on by companies that saw their opening to exploit the situation and proceeded to do so by artificially increasing prices. Remember their mission is profit not the public good, that role is for government.
The reality is that a President and other politicians get way too much blame when the economy has problems like inflation or unemployment and get way too much credit when the economy turns around and begins to function well. It has been weird to have the former president and nominee of the Republican party claim he is responsible for the good economic news when he hasn’t been in office for more than 3.5 years but never claimed any responsibility for the bad economic conditions that were much closer to his presidency. There are too many factors that can positively or negatively (for example monopolistic behavior) affect the economy, and politicians can only provide broad guidance and macroeconomic influence, not the more precise microeconomic influence over economic behavior within the country.
