I'm not sure on what basis you're claiming that free markets prevent monopolies, but even if they do, free markets self-destruct. Once corporations in a free market have enough money to start influencing politics they use it to start regulating in their favor and the market ceases to be free. You can regulate to prevent that, but then the market isn't free, yet again.
It's also a bit myopic to view companies as a binary monopoly/not monopoly. A company with 90% market share isn't a monopoly, but has most of the downsides of a monopoly, and likely is a monopoly within subsets of the market.
Free market forces don't prevent it from getting close enough to cause a problem (if that's even possible under capitalism- the problem we're talking about is due to the attempt to gain a monopoly, not having one). I couldn't care less what Standard Oil's maximum market share was, you're arguing an irrelevant technicality.
My point is, again, that in this case the prospect is what causes the problem.
The "problem" was that kerosene prices dropped 70% under SO.
The real problem was that Rockefeller was rich, and then (like today) a lot of people just can't stand the idea that others are rich.
If you're really interested in going beyond soundbites and understand what was happening, I really recommend Chernow's "Titan". Chernow actually agrees with you, so you can't argue his book is unfair. Chernow's opinions, however, are not congruent with his presented facts in the book. He's just so convinced of Rockefeller's evil nature that he is blinded by his own narrative :-)
> The real problem was that Rockefeller was rich, and then (like today) a lot of people just can't stand the idea that others are rich.
dont you think its kind of upsetting when someone could improve someone's life drastically without any (practically speaking) detriment to their own. obscene wealth is upsetting to me, and i know lots of people who have it, and i dont hate them. so its not about the person, per se. i just find it extremely unfortunate, knowing first hand how things could be different, in an almost pareto improvement way.
right now there is someone who will die because they cannot afford proper medical care. the is almost certainly someone with a lot of money, doing nothing with it, that could fix that at no cost to themselves. thats a little upsetting right?
Neither of those are the problem I'm referring to, which should be obvious based on the thread we're in...
But to spell it out, the problem is that the winner-takes-all aspect encourages people to overwork themselves or their employees, despite the diminishing returns that brings.
Maybe you're just so convinced of capitalism's good nature that you were blinded to what we were talking about in the first place? ;)
I think you're inventing a problem. I don't know many capitalists or employees who believe they must work themselves to death because of some presumed winner-take-all aspect. In fact, I don't know any.
Few define business success as erasing all competition. Success is making a good profit.
A prospect and an actual problem are two different things.
SO was never convicted of being a monopoly, either. A subtle but crucial point, and usually overlooked.