I'm trying to think of genuine monopolies that faded away without intervention and am coming up blank.
- IBM had a monopoly on electronic computers (mainframes) for a long time. And, hey, it also had one on "IBM" PCs for a while there...
- Cray supercomputers - there's an excellent example
- The original Apple II computer was a monopoly for a while.
- DEC minicomputers
- SUN microsystem workstations
- Silicon Graphics workstations
- that guy who patented the "car", and everyone licensed it from him (and who Ford challenged and defeated). Although this was a government created monopoly (a patent), it wasn't lost through government intervention. Or is that just semantics.
- Ford mass-produced cars
- General Electric (do they even sell light bulbs anymore?)
Another difficulty with the question is how you define monopoly: "well if you lost it, it wasn't really a monopoly, was it?"
There were a few other options, as I recall. A service called Payoneer, some others.
It used to be W.U. exclusively, but that's changed in the last ten years.
Sure, but that's not the group of people I was talking about, who generally go into a physical office, cash in hand, and want to send it somewhere else where someone can go pick up cash. WU isn't a complete monopoly in terms of sending money, obviously, but they still have a big chunk of the market. Actual facts would help the conversation, though:-)