How Did These Companies Get So Big? The Problem With Monopolies

Right now, if I were to sit down at my desk, tuck in my chair, open up my laptop, head to the internet and search for ‘LinkedIn’, update my page, then switch tabs and scroll Instagram for a second before hopping over to order some more coffee syrup because I’m running low, I would’ve just used pretty much all of the biggest tech companies that are dominating our society right now. There’s Apple, there’s Google, there’s Microsoft, there’s Meta, and there’s Amazon - these tech companies all together have a lot of power over the market, and there’s not a lot of room for smaller companies to break through, and then even if they do, they just get bought up by this powerful group, instead.

There’s a word for that kind of power in an industry, and it’s called a ‘monopoly’. A monopoly is basically when one company is able to control an entire market, where there’s no real competition from other companies selling the same goods or services. And this isn’t a new thing - monopolies have been around for a long time now, and there actually have been regulations put in place to limit their power… but the regulations haven’t been enforced as much as they could, and probably should, be. So, why are monopolies a problem? That's what we cover in this video!

0:00 Monopolies are all around us
1:54 The history of anti-monopoly legislation
3:53 What’s the problem with monopolies, anyways?
6:13 Example: TicketMaster vs Taylor Swift
7:01 Canada’s grocery store oligopoly problem
9:13 What can we do about the -opolies problem?

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[stephandden]

There's so much to talk about when it comes to monopolies and oligopolies! What other -opolies have you noticed around you? Let us know👀

[stephanbevan]

Glad you've branched out into showing what's wrong with the entire system. Nice work.

[caitlynn]

Interesting 🤔 the company I work for has monopolized a very niche service and everything you guys talked about definitely checks out. Profit greed is causing the company to fail quickly

[cd.cd.cd.cd-cd]

good general overview of a very layered topic, alot of this started in the U.S. with Reagan decreasing enforcement of our antitrust laws and now its continued to where a report came out recently that entrepreneurship is at a 40 year low

[cajungames]

Somehow my channel has been tied to yours haha! Woohoo by proxy. Thankyou!

[michaelssali]

Monopolies exist because the costs for competitors will be too high for them to start their new business. I mean, think about it, if I wanted to make a computer company, my costs would be so high that I would find it not worth it to compete against Microsoft. So, instead of trying to "beat" them, I join them, by, hypothetically, getting a coding job there. We learned this in International Economics back in 2012 (wow, am I that old? LOL), and the teacher told us that Monopolies will get fewer and fewer because companies that are big will make it harder for smaller companies to compete.

Look at what happened to Myspace; Yahoo!; Blackplanet; etc; when Facebook came, all those went out of business. I mean, Myspace is there, but it's a music site; Yahoo! still exists, but lost its social networking dominance of the early 2000s (2002-2010); and Blackplanet, well, that one is personal to me because it was my favorite, and Facebook just killed it. I used to spend hours and hours in the chatrooms with people from all over the world on Blackplanet. It was fun, exciting, and informative. As a matter of fact, from 2009-2012, while I was still in college, my time on the Blackplanet chatrooms is the reason why I did so well in school. I would get help for my homework from people in the chat. It was fun, and exciting. But guess what? Facebook shut it down. Yahoo! was my second favorite after Blackplanet and it shut down (they took down Yahoo! games, closed Yahoo! Answers [another great help for my college classwork] and even Yahoo! Messenger), bought by Verizon. See, those two really hurt me a lot. Losing Blackplanet and Yahoo! made me not wanna be online anymore. I used to spend half and half of my time on those two. So, yes, Monopolies are bad in this instance.

I don't mind monopolies if they are great companies. Like Yahoo! or Blackplanet being a monopoly wouldn't bother me because they are great and help people. Facebook on the other hand is just an information stealing, waste of time, and useless website (app, I guess, in this day and age) that it sucks that they took over. I believe the smartphone was the reason why my favorite sites shut down. You can't be in a chatroom on a smartphone. When we were on Blackplanet, a room had about 300 people, all typing messages fast and you would have to read fast to see them. Some rooms were smaller and more intimate, but those 300-member rooms were more fun when there was a certain event going on, like on superbowl day. And guess what, it helped me learn how to read at a lightning speed. Oh, how I miss BP! So, if you're on a phone screen, the screen is too small for you to read messages that fast. And the typing, with a computer keyboard, I could type over 60 WPM in the chatroom. As a matter of fact, it helped me increase my typing speed. But on a smartphone, there is no way you can type 60 WPM. So, yea, I think Facebook figured that if they could switch from having a website to being on Smartphones, they would kill those other sites. And that's when it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday. Facebook switched to smartphones and people, I guess who didn't know how to type, which is a lot of people, switched to facebook. Facebook came in 2004 and was nowhere near the dominance of Yahoo!. But guess who they "colluded" with (another Econ term I learned)? Apple. Before this collusion, neither Apple nor Facebook were dominant. So, yea, it sucks that that happened. But what can you do. I don't even like using the internet anymore. Lol, I still watch Steph and Den, but most of the time I am reading or watching Hulu!

Den is right, what he said at the end. People need to stand up and do something about it. People need to realize that they have more power than the companies. Once they realize that and start working together, they can make a change for the better.

This is the best video I've ever seen on this channel, and I think I've seen them all. Great job guys. Keep it up. The vibes were great in this one. I've never written a comment this long. So, now, you guys have to top it next week. I'll be patiently waiting for the next one.

[kiarajones]

Can you do a video on what options trading, and covered calls are?