I would caution everyone, though, to keep things in the right perspective when they look at things from a historical standpoint. Some industries -- especially those that require huge capital investments and operate through "open access" arrangements under tight government regulation -- almost have to operate as monopolies by definition. Public utilities and similar companies like telephone and cable providers would fit this description before cell phone and satellite technology made a lot of their infrastructure obsolete.
If you want to see monopolistic practices in U.S. history, just look at the growth of the railroad industry in the latter half of the 19th century. Railroads were so dominant in this country that all of the companies in the precursor to the Dow Jones Industrial Index in the 1880s were railroads.
If you want to see monopolistic practices in U.S. history, just look at the growth of the railroad industry in the latter half of the 19th century. Railroads were so dominant in this country that all of the companies in the precursor to the Dow Jones Industrial Index in the 1880s were railroads.
Now see, this is an excellent point. At one time people did not realize that certain things which we now call "utilities" are so critical to the population that they became heavily regulated due to the power they were capable of wielding.
What Amazon, What Google, What Microsoft, and others have done, is make themselves so d@mn near indespensible as to almost qualify as a Utility.
Is not Google d@mn near a Utility now? A Water company pipes water into your home, Google pipes information into your home. It's looking like Amazon will be piping Groceries into your home, and at some point it makes sense to stop viewing them as private corporations and begin looking at them as a sort of Utility, Like Water, Electric or Gas.
Everything has become commoditized.