monopolies

When you mention the word the first thing most people will think about is the board game. If they think about a business then they will probably have an opinion to share. Businesses that have become monopolies have been known for being hounded by the government and being taxed to such a great extent that they cant grow. Another opinion might be that they try to control the market and destroy small businesses.

The most common examples would be some natural monopolies, such as electricity companies, water companies and so on. As for businesses that are monopolies you wont find many because the US breaks up any company that becomes a full monopoly. One I think has slipped under the law however would be blue ray, they effectively saw to the fall of HD and now have no competion. They are not considered a monopoly because DVD still exists even though DVD is not truly considered a competing format. They now however control the entire current market for next gen media formats.

Natural monopolies however are the only companies that are allowed to run without the risk of being split up. The reason for this is because they would fail if they had to work in competition. The government however sets laws to how much these companies can charge and how large they can expand. Most people would probably not think the government is doing a good job, even though the companies loose a very large amount of profit to taxes, the prices the charge are still fairly high because they are often allowed to add extra fees.

In many ways monopolies have hurt markets, they raise the prices as high as they can, they don't allow smaller businesses to start up. They tend to loose quality as they have no one to compete with. One the other hand they some times help the market by becoming very large and bringing money to a small market. The can increase employment and through taxes bring money to the state (how that's used is another story).

For the most part its all personal opinion. While there are many monopolies that we require to run our societies there are many ways in witch they hurt markets by controlling them. That is why you find very few monopolies except for the ones vitally needed.