> But Telecoms and the old Robber Barons had monopolies without government forcing people.
Telecoms were totally built by govs. Back in the days govs were obsessed with controlling the means of communication, so all the related biz was due to the monopoly right.
> AT&T established a network of subsidiaries in the United States and Canada that held a government-authorized phone service monopoly, formalized with the Kingsbury Commitment, throughout most of the twentieth century.
> With $18.8 million spent in 2013, Comcast has the seventh largest lobbying budget of any individual company or organization in the United States.[62] Comcast employs multiple former U.S. Congressmen as lobbyists.
Sure, nothing to do with the government. Go ahead, try to bypass FCC and establish a new telecom company. It's literally pushed by the gov, as in any heavily regulated domain with patents and other monopoly rights.
As for robber barons, that's mostly an antitrust myth to scare people
> After 1900 it did not try to force competitors out of business by underpricing them.[37] The federal Commissioner of Corporations studied Standard's operations from the period of 1904 to 1906[38] and concluded that "beyond question ... the dominant position of the Standard Oil Co. in the refining industry was due to unfair practices—to abuse of the control of pipe-lines, to railroad discriminations, and to unfair methods of competition in the sale of the refined petroleum products".[39] Due to competition from other firms, their market share had gradually eroded to 70 percent by 1906 which was the year when the antitrust case was filed against Standard, and down to 64 percent by 1911 when Standard was ordered broken up[40] and at least 147 refining companies were competing with Standard including Gulf, Texaco, and Shell.