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IBM Sears RCA Intel GE Disney Kmart Kodak Novell Lotus Wordstar AT&T Microsoft
without any push from the government.
> Even good social safety net enhance freedom of economic activity
No actual evidence of that. The US boomed for 150 years before there was a social safety net. The greatest lifting of people out of poverty ever seen.
How some mighty monopolies have fallen. Your examples don't refute GP's point, unless you'd like to assert that monopolies and oligopolies don't exist anymore.
> The greatest lifting of people out of poverty ever seen.
How do you square that with the fact that United States, with your platonic ideal of economic policies, has the highest rate of poverty in the developed world?
> has the highest rate of poverty in the developed world?
The poverty rate in the US was declining until 1968, when it started going back up. What happened in 1968? Welfare.
The social safety net was a continent's worth of land to settle and develop.
How has Disney fallen? Last I checked, they seem to be doing better than ever, and have gobbled up so many IP franchises they look more like a monopoly than ever (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.).
Microsoft sure hasn't fallen either. Windows isn't quite as dominant as before, but MS got even bigger by moving to cloud stuff instead of just relying on Windows/Office.
Sears was never a monopoly of any kind, that I remember. Neither was Kmart, or Wordstar, or GE. AT&T, formerly Bell, was a monopoly and got a huge push from the government in the form of a forced break-up in the 80s. The AT&T of modern times (the cellular company) was never a monopoly of any sort.
It is usually quickly followed by dictatorship though, since force must be used to keep people living under it. Otherwise productive people will naturally pursue prosperity for themselves and their loved ones, which leads straight to capitalism.
There’s China though. Their party is at least called a communist party. I wouldn’t call their politics communism, except for their land ownership laws. Basically a dictatorship, since anyone opposing the government seemingly ends up in prison. Hasn’t seemed to hinder their economic growth.
See the list of failed monopolies in another post here I made.