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Are there any historical examples of this where the company in question was not in charge or national resources or infrastructure that was paid by a government?
by wudangmonk 8y ago
Are there any historical examples of this where the company in question was not in charge or national resources or infrastructure that was paid by a government?. All the bell, oil, railroad examples have this in common.
Short of the government making these companies the only government approved ones in their respective fields I do not see how breaking them up would be something that can be done. Even then the monopoly would only exist because yet again the government created it.
- reaperducer 8y agoAre there any historical examples of this where the company in question was not in charge or [sic] national resources or infrastructure that was paid by a government?. American Tobacco Company, for one. There are a number of others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Tobacco_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Toba....
- wahern 8y agoAmerican Tobacco was aggressively and successfully conspiring with other companies to maintain high prices. It's precisely such conspiracies to restrain trade that are specifically prohibited by the Sherman Act. How is Facebook conspiring to restrain trade? With whom? Would breaking Facebook up result in lower prices for using social media services? The services are already free. Should people expect to get paid for posting selfies? Breaking up Facebook for its behavior would be like breaking up IBM for age discrimination. It doesn't matter whether it's wrong nor even whether it's illegal. It's neither the function nor intent of anti-trust law to break up companies under such pretenses.