I think it comes down to leadership. Put simply, monopolies do have greater capacity to innovate. When you're stuck in brutal competition, it's hard to funnel

I think it comes down to leadership. Put simply, monopolies do have greater capacity to innovate. When you're stuck in brutal competition, it's hard to funnel money into research which might not pay off for decades—your competition might have driven you out of business by that point. On the other hand, the allure of monopoly profits is hard to ignore. It's tempting to simply funnel the profits into shareholder pockets and that's the approach investors will generally favor. For any middling CEO, it's the path of least resistance. This is why founder-controlled monopolies (Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc.) are such a potent force. They have the incentive to preserve the companies long-term legacy (it's their personal legacy as well) through ambitions projects while also having the credibility and power to resist investor preferences for short-term profits.