And it does matter very much how somebody gets power. If he does it by providing a better service than everybody else, then so be it. Such is the reward of success.
That is naive. Kings got power by inheriting it. How they get power is irrelevant to the fact that too much power concentrated in the hands of two few is a recipe for Oligarchy, especially with all the socialist leaning people of wealth nowadays.
It's a temporary thing, though. What one does well, some other will eventually do better, and a new player may replace the old.
That is wishful thinking substituting for a valid rebuttal. How do you know that it is temporary? How do you know a new player will replace the old? Because that has been the case in the past?
That is a logical fallacy.
It's when a monopoly maintains its position by illegitimate means (and history provides plenty of examples) that there is a problem.
It is when a monopoly is created or maintained by any means that there is a problem. Monopolies are inherently detrimental to those who have to live under them. The temptation to use the power of a monopoly is too great, and human resistance to temptation is too weak.
If you create the power, it will be abused.
In the old days, robber barons used goon squads and labor strikes against their competitors, boycotts against upstream vendors, many such underhanded tactics "in restraint of trade", as they are categorized.
And these things were mostly legal at the time. This is my point. People's understanding of what is happening needs to be informed by the notion that things which are currently legal, perhaps should not be legal.
We are plowing new ground so far as monopolies go, because the technology to achieve one in this manner did not exist previously.
We may discover that we need to implement new laws to prevent such monopolies from being formed, and it may require us to make illegal things which are currently legal.
Nowadays, the myrmidons of DC have decided that it's too much like work to fight illegal restraint of trade, and more profitable to come to terms with monopolists. Not that they ignore the possible uses of the law when some upstart entrepreneur threatens to crash the party. Remember how they turned the hounds loose on Microsoft (for good cause), and also remember how quickly that all just "went away" with a few "burnt offerings" at the proper altars?
Yes I do, and I still regard Microsoft as a near monopoly and one which should be broken.
"We" just need to break up the monopolistic government ("drain the swamp") and the existing monopolistic businesses that depend on it to maintain their positions will have to sink or swim.
Well I agree, but that is as difficult a proposition as restraining the monopolies. The "Swamp" protects it's creatures, and we are having a hard enough time trying to pry business and government collusion apart already.
I see a long fight ahead of us, and one which we may not win.