Monopolies are generally not granted, except in exceptional circumstances. The US government didn't grant Microsoft a monopoly in PC operating systems.
> Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
Yes, yes they do. I listed three examples of what a government granted monopoly looks like. Copyright, trademark and patents don’t exist naturally, and they’re unenforceable without the Rule of Law.
> What are you referring to?
Most recently (that I can think of): the suit the Feds filed against Facebook that was tossed out of court.
That’s not a useful distinction. Market monopolies, if they exist, where they exist, are usually tied into those same government granted monopolies. Facebook the bare bones public domain Technology stack is a lot less valuable to investors than Facebook the service on the Facebook servers presented to Facebook account holders on Facebook’s private servers at Facebook.com paid for with Ad revenue generated by Facebook’s copyrighted (and maybe partially patented?) adtech and backed by Sales Reps on Facebook’s payroll.
And despite all of that, they’re probably still not a monopoly for anything (haven’t heard a convincing argument on this one yet!), at least anywhere the DoJ and FTC have jurisdiction.
I very much doubt that if someone could setup another service named Facebook, they could compete with them or do much beyond annoy customers and phish.
Let’s not get into hypotheticals. You know as well as I do that a large bit of Facebook’s early growth story was their brand and their reputation. That name may have been dragged through the mud in the past few years, but it still means something, and its not without value despite the recent rebranding on the parent company front.
Meta retains the exclusive right to do business using the Facebook mark and they’ll continue to enforce it. It’s the same story for any other company, and it’s a form of monopoly that the government grants, not something that would be enforceable otherwise.
There are many ways to accomplish the same things. Tech companies have large patent portfolios, yet there is plenty of competition. Perhaps the biggest obstacles to competition are the network effect for social media, and brand power - people use Amazon and Google despite many equally good alternatives.
The problem is that even if there are alternative ways, it's not always profitable to find them. One clear example is drug prices. The price to manufacture a drug is tiny compared to the cost to develop a new one, so of someone has a patent on a drug that cures a disease, it's not worth anyone else's time to develop a different drug. Getting your drug approved will take years (for good reason), and at the end, you have a product that competes with another company, where instead you could just develop a different drug and get your own monopoly. As such, there are product monopolies on pretty much all drugs to treat rare diseases.
Monopolies are generally not granted, except in exceptional circumstances. The US government didn't grant Microsoft a monopoly in PC operating systems.
> Proving a monopoly exists or are forming could be another way to do so, but so far they have recently made lackluster arguments in Courts of Law on that front.
What are you referring to?