I just don’t think we’re anywhere near that point, or that we will get anywhere near it. There has been far too much progress away from that time for society to ever devolve back to it. People, and most politicians, would never tolerate such a radical backslide, no matter how gradual. Too many laws and regulations have been put in place. Technology has advanced too far. Education has become far more widespread. Mobility of labor has made such severe exploitation of labor impractical.

And the elements of society that may want a return to that dystopian world are not as widespread and monolithic as you seem to think. There are plenty amoung the elite capitalist class who understand that they are wealthier when there is a large middle class. If people have disposable income, they buy things like cars, TVs durable goods, etc. They go on vacations and spend, and this lifts society as a whole. The existence of a large middle class allows the rich to get richer from it. Not everyone thinks this way but more than enough are aware of the reality of it.

Not only are there many similarities between contemporary life and the Gilded Age, there is a concerted and organized effort to roll back a century of progress and move us back to that era. And who is working like crazy to bring this about? None other than those traditional robber barons and their mindless worshippers who are convinced they will profit by it, the scholars and philosophers who subscribe to that perverse nostalgia, the political parties that count on those reactionaries as their constituency, and the religious demagogues who will shamelessly follow any flag that promises them license to commit their spiritual crimes.

Those who would prosper by this reaction, who desire to return to a world of unrestricted (and socially acceptable) rapine and plunder have taken advantage of the general and widespread realization that this new economy we’ve created does not serve us all equally well. It also exploits and promotes the naive myth in our population that it is some treacherous Other, some foreign, racially distinct, culturally alien, religiously corrupt conspiracy of minorities led by a haughty elite that is the actual threat to our freedom and our prosperity. The conflation of these two concepts is no accident. In fact, it is a deliberate plan advanced with clever propaganda devised by clever social engineers and supported by limitless funding. A return to 19th century economic models is being carried out by a promotion of 19th century social and political lies. The two go hand in hand, arm in arm, they are joined at the hip and walk side by side in a harsh and coordinated goose step.

The free market is a wonderful idea, it should never be abandoned and should be supported and promoted, but it is being turned into a distraction that obscures what is really going on. But it never was an inevitable result of simply leaving the system alone and allowing Natural Law to take over and stabilize it. Like Freedom itself, it is a fragile and weak system that must be constantly supported and defended from avarice and vice.

The effort to pervert this Freedom is not some new technological or ideological corruption that now stalks the world. It is a simple lust for wealth and power

And that is older than Babylon and evil as hell.

“What grinds my gears is how some economists often treat economics as if it is a natural science with observable laws that have passed through the rigor of the scientific method. To be crystal clear, the problem is not economics itself, the problem is when it crystallizes into dogma, which can then be used to uphold exploitative systems of labor.“

Cable companies had local monopolies for years until dish came around, and later streaming services. Far fewer people use cable TV anymore so those companies have evolved into internet service providers. Even their barriers to entry couldn’t stop technology from out-competing them. I read the USPS is considered a monopoly (a government one, not greedy capitalists!) but that really ignores the market power of Fed EX, UPS and other parcel services. Utilities, water and power, are true regional monopolies because of barriers to entry, but they are of course very heavily regulated.

Most businesses are competitive though and while the owners of a given business would surely love to dominate their market, other free market capitalists understand that would only bring higher prices, inferior quality, lack of innovation, etc. People who believe in the free market know competition is crucial. I think I might have mention this before but it bears repeating: When i was in college my most libertarian minded professor taught a class on government regulation. This dude was as Laissez-faire as it gets. But even he acknowledged the need for government to be involved in the market for things like: preventing fraud, making companies pay for pollution and other negative side effects to society, being the arbitrator of last resort to settle business disputes, and of course to PREVENT MONOPOLIES which undermine the free market. He got it, and he taught it, that you can’t believe in the free market and not believe in competition. (He even had a small section about things like corporate social responsibility and social equity believe it or not.)

BUT HERE’S THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT I’D LIKE TO MAKE: The gilded age was a very different time than today. There are many differences including education, regulation, etc. But the biggest is mobility of labor. For most of human history, until the widespread use of automobiles, 90% of the world’s population never travelled more than 20 miles from where they were born. They were stuck working for the Baron or Junker who owned the local factory, and they had little recourse to finding other work. This was a situation ripe for exploitation. That situation just doesn’t exist anymore. If someone really doesn’t want to work for Amazon or Google or literally any company, they quit and work elsewhere because it is easy for them to hop in their car, or use public transportation, and go to a different job. That holds true for every business in every place.

So in summary, there is obviously no one company that alone makes everything you need, and that you are forced to work for. It doesn’t exist, so this imaginary company you talk about doesn’t OWN YOU. No one is begging to be anyone’s slave.

Without a democratic government setting up regulatory agencies and the rule of law, you inevitably slide into an oligarchy, like we had in this country during the Gilded Age. Add unions and a free press and the big business machine has some sort of control on it. Without this, the people who control the means of production and the ability to communicate with the public will simply follow the path of least resistance.

When someone makes everything you need, sells it to you at whatever price he wants, and you can only buy it with the money he pays you in your paycheck, HE OWNS YOU! And if you don’t have a job you will be begging to be a slave.

Teddy Roosevelt, certainly not a lefty lib by any stretch of the imagination,, realized this. He understood capitalism could not survive unless the Trusts were Busted. Franklin Roosevelt, with the New Deal, broke the back of the Depression with the welfare state. Europe followed suit with democratic socialism.

Now the forces of reaction want to take us back to the Gay Nineties, La Belle Epoque, The Gilded Age. Read your Sinclair Lewis. They want to take us back to that time. They are positively nostalgicc for it. They’ve been trying to turn the clock back since the Reagan Administration.

And its all based on the lie that they know what’s best, that they know what they’re doing, and that anyone who disagrees with them must be a Communist. After all, the LAWS OF ECONOMICS justify everything they want to do.

Of course, the middle class loves this. They have political power, prosperity, freedom, toys. What they don’t notice is that they are fewer in number. And one day they wake up to find out they are threatened, that they are vanishing, that their kids are NOT going to be as wealthy as they were, and they start looking for someone to blame it on.

Get government off our backs! Dismantle the regulators, the agencies, put the blacks and the immigrants in their place. Exterminate the gays and abortionists. Let us take charge again, we know what we’re doing, we’re the creators of all wealth, we know how the system should work, we follow the God-given Laws of Economics. Get your MBA and you can be one of us too..

Read your history. We’ve seen this movie before. Those who own slaves will always recruit those who wish to own slaves to fight their rebellions for them.

Logistically, it is impossible to have competitors share the wires and the gas lines. So it is what it is.

(Which is not free market capitalism.)

If the gas stations collude to set prices, that is by definition not competition. But as you also said, “one of them can cheat…” This is not a hypothetical but an inevitable expectation. Cartels always have cheaters which ruin the party. The temptation to lower the price just slightly to gain more market share (yes greed) is too strong and undermines the cartel. OPEC is a good example. Members agree to cut production to raise the price of oil, but after a short time there is ALWAYS at least one member who raises production over the agreed point to make more money. The rest then follow suit.

Monopolies are a different story since they have no competitors at all and thus don’t have market pressures on them. They will charge more and provide inferior products or services. We’re both old enough to remember when Ma Bell had a monopoly on America’s phone service. Once it was broken up phone service vastly improved. Voice mail, call waiting, wireless phones, cell phones, cheaper rates, less service interruption, etc all followed the break up of Ma Bell.

I think we can agree that monopolies rig the market. So do cartels at least temporarily. Where you and I will never agree is that the market is rigged when there is competition.