Most people will think of the board game when they hear the word Monopoly, but few understand the meaning and effects of real-life monopolies in our marketplace.  A monopoly occurs when a single seller in a particular market has gained the majority of the consumer base for their particular good or service.  Fred Foldvary, a respected economics professor at San Jose State University, says that a monopoly in a market means "the existing firms, whether one or several, are the single source of that product.  To enter the industry, one cannot obtain some input resources and expand the output," (Foldvary) essentially crushing competition and future entrepreneurs.  In the late 19th century, laws were written to give the government the power to put the hammer down on companies that they felt were using unfair business approaches to absorb industries and take the upper hand over their competitors.  Although laws such as the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 were put in place for the government to curb monopolies, the government is not always able to stop all of them.  Often, this is due to the governing powers turning a blind eye, but there are other ways monopolies can slip through the cracks as well.  Companies use their money, power, and connections to stay out of trouble, but the Federal Trade Commissions' main goal is to prevent and eliminate anticompetitive business practices and to establish a healthy, competitive economy in the United States.  Looking past the corporations that maintain the market share despite government regulations, without the Federal Trade Commission, our marketplace would be flooded with companies unable to compete, inflated prices, and controlled supply of goods at the will of the industry superpowers.  Although the owners and investors might view what they are doing as harmless or even beneficial, many of our industries are still impacted by the greed of monopolistic companies, despite efforts to stop them since it first became a problem over 100 years ago.  Ideally, we should be working hard to produce a stable economy with perfect competition among all facets of the market, leading to people and competitors being able to feel free from the oppression of the monopolies.

The Sherman Antitrust Act's first big case was against John D. Rockefeller, an oil tycoon of the late 19th and early 20th century, and his company, Standard Oil.  Before the rise of Rockefeller's empire, "the oil refining market was highly competitive, with numerous small, enterprising 'independent refiners' competing harmoniously with each other so that their customers got kerosene at reasonable prices while they made a nice living" (Epstein), as described by Alex Epstein, a leading debater for free-market energy.  The men and women that ran these independent refineries were honest people who made good money, while supplying their particular regions with fairly priced oil.  At the time, the oil industry maintained a fair and healthy marketplace by sharing the wealth, giving the consumers the freedom of choice and confidence in whom they gave their money to.  Before long, Rockefeller's greed got the best of him, and he began secretly teaming up with partnering railroads that promised to give Standard Oil lower shipment costs in return for rebate contracts.  This dramatically reduced his "cost of production so that he could cut the prices of his product and still be able to make a profit while his competitors had to take losses to compete" (Epstein).  While an extremely effective business model from Rockefeller's perspective, the majority of smaller companies trying to keep up with Standard Oil's stronghold were left in bankruptcy and forced to shut down.  This meant that Rockefeller could swoop in and buy all the failing companies, further growing his empire over the oil industry.  Once he gained the power to crush any competition, Standard Oil had achieved an unquestionable monopoly.  At their peak, they had control of over 90% of the refined oil in America, and they had the power to charge the public whatever they pleased, leaving consumers with no choice but to pay Standard Oil's predatory and inflated prices.  This is when John Sherman, a senator from Ohio, presented his act to stop Rockefeller's monopoly that had made him the richest man of all time.  The Sherman Antitrust Act restricts trusts, a legal organization set up to collect and manage the assets of its beneficiaries, from being formed. The Act forced Standard Oil to split into 34 independently owned corporations in 1911, breaking apart Rockefeller's monopoly.  Without John Sherman noticing the impending danger that monopolies, such as Standard Oil could, create in the future and stepping in to create the Antitrust Acts, our marketplace over the last 100 years could have become completely different than how we know it.  The Antitrust Acts have helped us ensure an increased level of equal competition, benefitting new and existing businesses and consumers alike.

Although the Standard Oil Trust created a monopoly that led to a completely anticompetitive oil industry, the industry did reap some benefits from the monopoly.  As Rockefeller did, many big corporations often ignore any accusations of harmful misdoings by hiding behind a thin veil of the benefits that they feel their monopolies offer.  Before Rockefeller's entry into the market, "there were a lot of oil companies competing to make the most of their find, companies would often pump waste products into rivers or straight out on the ground rather than going to the cost of researching proper disposal" (Beattie).  Their lack of necessary funds for proper disposal of byproducts and the use of cheap, leaking pipelines led to destruction of the environment.  Once Rockefeller was dominating the market, he had enough money to research new ways to dispose of waste and even make recycled products that he could sell; Vaseline being one of the products that could be created from his byproducts.  Being such a powerful and wealthy monopoly, Standard Oil had the freedom and ability to undertake newfound projects that smaller companies could not.  Allowing cheaper, faster, and higher production of goods and services, this later benefitted "state-regulated utilities for developing the U.S. into an industrial nation" (Beattie).  Despite the harm that Rockefellers' oil empire brought to his competition and the overall marketplace, it is clear that in this situation, the industry ultimately found a few benefits from his from excessively competitive business ethics.

Almost 100 years later, we still see companies that have clear monopolies over their competitors despite the government's efforts to stop them with laws and regulations.  One of these companies is Monsanto, the world's leading seed provider.  Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, popular political activists for economic stability, explain that Monsanto poses a problem to farmers and consumers alike because they "put their profits over the need for healthy foods, diverse seed supplies and the stability of the agricultural economy" (Zeese & Flowers).  Monsanto uses a variety of tactics to ensure that farmers buy their seeds over other suppliers despite the fact that the dominance of their products is detrimental to biodiversity, independent farmers, farmland, and the people that consume the products.  The way that Monsanto maintains its monopoly in the agricultural market is by restricting "the seed companies' ability to combine Monsanto's traits [of their GMO's] with those of their competitors. And, famously, farmers who plant Monsanto's patented seeds sign contracts prohibiting them from saving and replanting their seeds" (Zeese & Flowers).  By constricting the farmers to contractually binding agreements, the farmers have no choice but to buy their seeds from Monsanto every season, while continually paying royalties for their use.  There are a few other agriculture superpowers, but Monsanto also licenses its genetically modified seeds to many of them; "as a result, more than 80% of US corn and more than 90% of soybeans planted each year are attributable to Monsanto" (gmeducation.org) with similar numbers in countries all over the world, showing their undeniable monopolization.  Along with seeds, Monsanto also sells the widely used pesticide known as RoundUp, which accounts for over a quarter of their revenue.  As seen in Robert Kenner's film, Food, Inc. (2008), which shows the devastation that big businesses have brought to food industry, less than two decades ago, the seed industry was full of different seed providers that gave farmers the freedom to purchase both unmodified seeds and GMOs from whomever they pleased.  In 1996, only 2% of soybeans contained Monsanto's patented genes, but this number quickly increased to over 90% over the next decade (Food, Inc.).  To further ensure that they gain maximum profits from their goods, the seeds they sell are genetically modified to "resist RoundUp so that the herbicide is absolutely necessary for those who buy these seeds" (Zeese & Flowers).  They have knowingly created a flaw in their own products to ensure that farmers continue to buy more and more of their other products.  By doing this, Monsanto has gained control of multiple sides of the growing process, placing them in a constant circle of increasing profits.  They have effectively taken over an entire line of the agriculture industry, leaving farmers suffering from their loss of freedoms, which eventually makes its way to the consumers.  Monsanto's grasp of seed industry has led to farmers losing their ability to grow non-modified seeds, to have biodiversity among other farmers, and to sell products that they can guarantee are not going to be harmful to the consumers due to being genetically modified.

It is no surprise that Monsanto's destructive monopoly has been noticed, but even after years of ridicule and being taken all the way to the Supreme Court, Monsanto has still prevailed.  Monsanto has a large group of investigators that have control of a "blacklist" containing all the farmers in the country that have failed to present Monsanto with records verifying that they are following Monsanto's patent laws (Food, Inc.), and Monsanto has no problem with crushing every single one.  By claiming that they own the intellectual property rights of their products, they have the power to sue anyone they feel might be hurting their profits and growth.  In 2007, Monsanto sued Vernon Hugh Bowman, an independent farmer from Indiana, for patent infringement after he planted second-generation seeds that he bought from Monsanto the previous year.  From the Supreme Court's point of view, Bowman was in the wrong because planting GMO's automatically enters the user into a restrictive licensing agreement, and "the seed packaging also states that simply opening the bag binds the user to the agreement" (Hubbard).  Moe Parr, a seed cleaner and farmer from Indiana, refused to switch over to Monsanto's GMOs, despite all of his neighbors making the switch.  When the pollen from Parr's neighbors travels to his land, it contaminates his seeds with GMO's, and he routinely has to present proof to Monsanto that he is not stealing their seeds.  Despite Parr's efforts to stay out of trouble, Monsanto still sued him for accusations of encouraging farmers to break patent laws by cleaning their seeds for replanting.  After being abandoned by his friends for fear of what Monsanto might do to his acquaintances, Parr was left with more than a million dollars in court fees and forced to file for bankruptcy (Food, Inc.).  Bowman and Parr are among hundreds of farmers that have been pursued by Monsanto's group of investigators for patent infringement and left with millions of dollars of debt and no means of income.  With even the highest courts of law on Monsanto's side, there is virtually nothing farmers can do to escape Monsanto's monopoly.  If producers can't even take their problems to the government for help, what else could they possibly do?  Monsanto, similar to other companies who have been taken to court, are able to slip through the system of Antitrust Laws with their binding contracts, broad patents, and political power to help them remain on their feet as they continue to watch billions of dollars in revenue fall into their greedy hands.

Monsanto has been criticized for years for its unethical business model, yet they are the ones who have taken over 800 individual farmers to court for breaking their patent laws.  Monsanto has been known to donate large sums of money to political figures in order to gain popularity from the people who can help them stay out of trouble.  They have done everything they can to place a barrier between them and the governing powers that might stop them.  There are several members of both the Clinton and Bush administrations that received record donations from Monsanto, giving them safety from any political administrations that might try to fight them.  There are people on both administrations who now work for Monsanto such as Robert Shapiro, a member of Clinton's advisory board and later the CEO of Monsanto.  Although many of these tactics are very questionable to the public's eyes, Monsanto, as many industry superpowers do, sees nothing wrong with their Monopoly, and they find refuge behind the few benefits they provide, ignoring any potential harm they cause to the public marketplace.  Monsanto claims that their genetically modified seeds can help farmers grow more crops for less money as well as help answer the world's growing food shortages in third-world countries.  Their seeds have a higher yield than standard seeds, and they can be planted in more diverse areas because of their higher tolerance to agriculturally weak environments.  Furthermore, Monsanto's seeds provide higher levels of nutrients, which could help populations that are suffering from malnutrition and starvation (Monsanto.com).  From the point-of-view of someone who's conscious of the populations suffering from food shortages, Monsanto's monopolistic behavior seems tolerable, but these tolerable behaviors can only barely mask all the other harm they cause.

To most consumers, it might appear that most of the companies we purchase goods and services from on a daily basis are independent and free from the influences of multi-billion dollar monopolies, but this is not the case.  The public marketplace that we use has a small number of powerful parent companies, a company that owns numerous smaller branches of brands and businesses.  These companies seek to buy out smaller competitors to get rid of competition, broaden their consumer base, and gain power, while consumers continue to think they still have the freedom to fork over their money to the companies they are in support of.  As a result, the parent companies end up controlling hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year, giving them the power to do just about whatever they please.  These companies control the food, automobile, and media industries along with many others.  An eye-opening graphic created by a philosophy student named Joki at The University of Montreal was shared on several popular websites as it showed that hundreds of the world's favorite brands are owned by just ten super powerful companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, and General Mills (convergencealimentaire.info).  These limited numbers of monopolistic parent companies hurt the freedom and competitive nature of a healthy marketplace.  Because these companies possess so much power and money, they can leave the interests of their consumers on the backburner, while they watch billions of dollars of income pile up.  Ultimately, it does not matter to these companies if a consumer buys one product over another because the same parent company more than likely owns several of the "competing" products.  These companies are able to sit in contentment as the leaders of their industries, decreasing the number of potential competitors that could bring new innovations or improvements to goods in the marketplace.

Furthermore, other industries that are effected by the monopolization of their markets are the media and banking industries.  In a graphic created by an economist and blogger known as "Frugal Dad", he hopes to show the extent of mass consolidation of all consumer media into a select few entities.  Only 30 years ago, more than 50 companies controlled American media, dwindling down to just six today, yet they control over 90% of what we read, watch, and hear (Frugal Dad).  These companies have the ability to control what we see and hear on the news, television, and in movies.  To put it into perspective, the six media giants' revenue of over $275 billion in 2010 was enough to buy every NFL team 12 times.  Also, their box office revenues were twice as much as the following 140 competing studios (Frugal Dad).  With over 300 million people in the US, we are left with just six multi-billion dollar companies that control almost all the media and information we consume on a daily basis?  When their main goals are money and complete control of the media industry, how do we know that what are consuming isn't influenced by the money and power they seek?  Furthermore, banking, and industry that is essentially the backbone of our entire economy and infrastructure, has also been subjected to threat of monopolization by a select few banking firms.  In a chart provided by MotherJones.com, it is shown that the thirty largest banks have been bought and consolidated into four just twenty years later.  The ten largest financial institutions now hold over 50% of all assets in the country, a number that has almost tripled.  These megabanks show no signs of slowing down until we see a complete monopoly of the banking industry (MotherJones.com).  With trillions of dollars being held in banks controlled by a select few entities, the threat of a complete banking failure becomes increasingly disastrous.  Having the vast majority of goods be controlled by a small number of monopolies, consumers have no choice but to give their money to these companies, whether they choose to support them or not.  Even worse, with their power and unimaginable sums of money, we are ultimately slaves to what they want us to buy and hear, stripping us of our ability to choose what we purchase, watch, and listen to.
