List of some REAL monopolies

[evensgrey]

Oh, I thought you meant, why didn't they do what the Bromkonvention did to Dow?

Okay, so to answer your actual question: that was actually what Standard Oil did to them!

I though that the stunt Dow pulled was to buy up all the cheap bromine that Bromkonvention was dumping in the US to try and drive Dow out of business and sell it for a nice profit in Europe where it was undercutting and driving Bromkonvention out of business.  I thought Standard Oil didn't bother with expensive, messy, smelly, spoilage-prone animal oils at all.

[MrBogosity]

I though that the stunt Dow pulled was to buy up all the cheap bromine that Bromkonvention was dumping in the US to try and drive Dow out of business and sell it for a nice profit in Europe where it was undercutting and driving Bromkonvention out of business.  I thought Standard Oil didn't bother with expensive, messy, smelly, spoilage-prone animal oils at all.

The reason why it worked with Dow was that the Bromkonvention was selling them at a loss, so with every sale, he was making money and the Bromkonvention was losing money. The difference with Standard Oil is that, like Dow, they'd actually found a cheaper way of making oil for lanterns and heaters, so they made profits with every sale. If the oil barons had tried that, Standard Oil would have just made even more money.