
Corporate Monopoly in America - neuralFatigue
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-05/here-s-how-they-play-monopoly-in-america-and-who-wins
======
meri_dian
The challenge in a globalized economy is that what may be a monopoly in the US
is likely competing against several global corporations within a given
industry. Leveraging anti-trust regulations against that dominant US player
may limit its ability to compete with global rivals, leading to the demise of
that company and the dominance of foreign corporations in the industry.

In the past, when the US economy was more isolated and the level of global
competition was much lower than it is now, breaking up monopoly corps in the
US wouldn't leave the resultant child corps vulnerable to foreign competition.

~~~
neuralFatigue
While that might be true for some organizations, it is not 'the' issue. Most
mergers and consolidations that have the potential to be most damaging aren't
necessarily global businesses. e.g ISP's consolidating, Health Insurance
companies in the US.

And I'd argue even companies that have a global presence, example US airlines,
might benefit from consolidation but it does harm their local market, in this
case US domestic travellers since they inevitably end up paying more due to a
lack of choice.

~~~
existencebox
Honest question: How can we help companies here "playing by the rules" in a
global field against (in your airport example) entities like heavily
subsidized UAE airlines, when they are essentially capped in some ways like
this?

Now my "opinion" section WRT the above: If preventing consolidation and
economies of scale forces airlines to other avenues such as sardine can
planes, deceptive ticketing (economy levels that just take away things at the
same price to push upselling), and govt protectionism (potentially exemplified
by the laptop bans to some arab countries recently), is this the route we want
to take? I don't have fantastic suggestions outside of "treat air as part of a
US infrastructure which drastically needs govt. investment" so thus my
question 1. (since I neither see my pipe-dream of infra commitment coming to
pass, nor am completely sold on routing tax dollars to private corps, even if
it would be an improvement on where they're being routed now. Perhaps
build/maintain airports and infrastructure and be a "common carrier" of
hardware that the companies simply rent? (I recognize states do this now, but
I also know the level of infrastructure funding my state has available, and
even intact roads are a fantasy.))

~~~
neuralFatigue
Slightly tangential but, to your point about UAE airlines this is a good read
to clear up some stuff coming from US airlines: Link:
[http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/03/22/campaign-a...](http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/03/22/campaign-
against-gulf-carriers/)

I'll admit there is no perfect solution to issues like these. We mostly don't
want government to pick winners or losers, but being completely free market
based and no monopoly protections is great for companies since it is a race to
the bottom line and they get to go to town on consumers with an array of fees
in the airline context. I don't think preventing consolidation however results
in any of those things that you mentioned, airlines are free to do what they
want and what the market will let them. I'd recommend reading that article
since I feel like we are not on the same page when we talk about 'playing by
the rules' airlines. +1 on infra investment though.

