The Ubiquitous Monopoly :: Business Essays

The Ubiquitous MonopolyMonopoly is nearly always seen as something undesirable. Courts have wrestled with monopoly for ages, sometimes delineate it as the power to control prices and exclude contest, restraining trade, or unfair and anti-competitive air. Should monopolistic practices be condemned and outlawed? Lets look at anti-competitive behavior and practices, but lets not confine ourselves to whats traditionally seen as monopoly.The wedlock get under sensations skin is essentially a monopoly document. It represents a legally sanctioned collusive compact between two parties to exclude competitors and restrain trade. It closes the market to competition, or at least it is supposed to. This collusion has benefits as well as costs. Because I have exclusive rights to her affections and property rights to a stream of highly set domestic services, I place a higher value on my mate, making me willing to share with her a greater percentage of my wealth. My spouse receives a compar able set of benefits from this collusive arrangement.This monopolistic arrangement has a cost side and perhaps some inefficiencies as well. Neither one of us is as attentive as we were before we made our contractual arrangement. For my part, I dont open the car door for her as often, dont use soupcon fresheners and colognes as frequently, am not as nearly considerate and refined as before our marriage some 42 years earlier. The evidence is simply that before marriage I was competing against other men and accordingly could ill afford to act as a monopolist.Read the former(a) Testaments Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 5, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. The first commandment, and presumably the most authoritative is, grand Shalt have none other gods before me. The second is, Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any similitude of any thing that is in heaven above. . . . Then theres, Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God. . . . If a corporation made a homogeneous decree regarding its services, it would find itself in the sights of the U.S. Department of Justice for gross violations of the anti-trust victual of the Sherman and Clayton Acts. The Ten Commandments decree exclusive dealing and mandate neither substitutes for nor competition with God.In order for one to condemn all monopolistic practices as evil, at least for consistency, he would have to also condemn marriage and the basic tenets of Christianity.