Free Essays on Monopolies

The corporations of today are much different than the corporations of ten years ago. Corporate mergers, which occur every month, are creating threatening giants, and companies going to court for years at a time battling over the same issue â€Å"are they a monopoly or not†? IBM merged ten years ago and Microsoft is merging right now. In order to come to a conclusion on this decade old question, you first must know the facts about what a monopoly is and what it takes to create one. What constitutes a monopoly? One more of the following elements must be present: (1) control of a major resource necessary to produce a product; (2) technological capabilities that allow a single firm to produce at reasonable prices all the output of a particular commodity or service; (3) exclusive control over a patent on a product or on the processes used to produce the product; (4) a government franchise that awards a company the sole right to produce a commodity or service in a given area. Edwin Mansfield, a political scientists, said, â€Å"for a monopoly to be effective there must be no practical substitutes for the product or service sold, and no serious threat of the entry of a competitor into the market† (23). This enables the seller to control the price. In the late 19th century the tendencies inherent in a free competitive economic order brought about new changes. In Great Britain, the United States, and other industrial nations, giant business firms began to emerge and dominate the economy. In part, this stemmed from the empire-building tactics of the captains of industry, such as the American entrepreneur John D. Rockefeller, who drove most competitors from the field. It also came about because of technological advances that enabled a handful of large firms to satisfy the demand in many markets. The result was not a complete monopoly but, rather, an economic order known as oligopoly. From the late 19th century onward, the U.S. has attempt... Free Essays on Monopolies Free Essays on Monopolies The corporations of today are much different than the corporations of ten years ago. Corporate mergers, which occur every month, are creating threatening giants, and companies going to court for years at a time battling over the same issue â€Å"are they a monopoly or not†? IBM merged ten years ago and Microsoft is merging right now. In order to come to a conclusion on this decade old question, you first must know the facts about what a monopoly is and what it takes to create one. What constitutes a monopoly? One more of the following elements must be present: (1) control of a major resource necessary to produce a product; (2) technological capabilities that allow a single firm to produce at reasonable prices all the output of a particular commodity or service; (3) exclusive control over a patent on a product or on the processes used to produce the product; (4) a government franchise that awards a company the sole right to produce a commodity or service in a given area. Edwin Mansfield, a political scientists, said, â€Å"for a monopoly to be effective there must be no practical substitutes for the product or service sold, and no serious threat of the entry of a competitor into the market† (23). This enables the seller to control the price. In the late 19th century the tendencies inherent in a free competitive economic order brought about new changes. In Great Britain, the United States, and other industrial nations, giant business firms began to emerge and dominate the economy. In part, this stemmed from the empire-building tactics of the captains of industry, such as the American entrepreneur John D. Rockefeller, who drove most competitors from the field. It also came about because of technological advances that enabled a handful of large firms to satisfy the demand in many markets. The result was not a complete monopoly but, rather, an economic order known as oligopoly. From the late 19th century onward, the U.S. has attempt... Free Essays on Monopolies You are driving on the highway when suddenly a limousine cuts you off. You look around to see if anything had caused this action. Nothing looks amiss, just a couple of cars a truck or two and a jeep on the highway. Little do you realize that the jeep is a Ford Explorer, and the person in the limousine is a Ford executive who knows how dangerous the jeep can be. Numerous people over the years have been injured and killed, when their Ford Explorer flipped over while driving. From its inception it was known that it performed poorly in rollover tests. That didn’t stop Ford from putting it on the market, because they knew it was going to be a huge moneymaker. The questions are why wasn’t anything done to stop this product from being allowed on the street? Who should have been responsible? What can be done in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Would it be so shocking to say that that big business, huge corporations have taken over? Are they the one’s deciding what is right and wrong? Lets be reasonable what can be so wrong with a jeep if it’s the best selling jeep in America. All anyone cares about these days is market price, what does Wall Street think of us. This is the same company who in the 1970’s actually had the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) put a value on a human life (about $200,000). They then used this number against the cost of modifying the Ford Pinto that was known to have a faulty gas tank, to decide whether it was worth fixing it or not. Finally, a recall was ordered, but only after being on the market for 7 years and 28 lives lost. The government has deregulated the market to the point where there really is no one watching over the auto industry. In Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign he declared,† the US auto industry is being regulated to deathà ¢â‚¬ . This took place right after the Pinto incident. Instead of harsher regulations for messing up, the government decided t...