Senior Thesis on Monoploies

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Hey guys

Going to graduate in August with a double major in International Affairs and Economics. Anyway, as part of the criteria for graduating with the Economics degree, I have to do a research paper. The topic I've chose is Monopolies.

What I could use some help on is finding some good examples where the free market effectively swept away Monopolies. One I'm using is Blockbuster and how they basically controlled the video rental market, and the Netflix and Redbox came in and now Blockbuster is teetering on bankruptcy.

Another I'm using is GameStop. Even though they've bought out practically ever used game chain, big box stores are getting in on the used games business, not to mention Craigslist, Amazon, and other websites.

This section is probably going to be around 15 pages, not including any graphs or other visual aids, so some other examples would be nice.

Thanks

[MrBogosity]

Well, those aren't very good examples since we didn't have a full free market, but you can look at small things like that: how Netflix compete with big rental places, how DirecTV and Dish Network compete with big cable, etc. as examples of how the free market innovated around government corporatism and brought in competition anyway.

But really, why would you need to look any further than Standard Oil? Look at how high oil prices were in the mid 1800s when the partnership that was to become Standard Oil was first formed. Then look around 1870 when it was officially incorporated, going down and down until 1880 when it achieved 90% share of refining capacity. Now see how it stayed rock-bottom while it was doing all of its horrible, evil, immoral, un-American, inhumane, and fattening "monopolistic" practices as it lost its share down to about 60% at the breakup in 1911.

Then watch oil prices go up, up, up, up since then.

By ostensibly protecting us from a monopoly (which was never a monopoly), they created corporatism, which resulted in the very thing they were claiming to want to avoid in the first place.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

I was trying to think of more modern examples, but Standard Oil is certainly a gold mine.

[MrBogosity]

Maybe you could look at DeBeers? They're probably the biggest almost-monopoly-sorta of the last century.