Insurance, food, cell service, and mattresses all have a fair amount of competition and lower prices. Airlines and medical are heavily regulated industries and

Insurance, food, cell service, and mattresses all have a fair amount of competition and lower prices. Airlines and medical are heavily regulated industries and regulation drives industries toward monopolies, not away from them. Search engines and social networks are different animals--they're already "free" to use and there aren't more of them in Europe (or the rest of the world) than in the US, so to the extent that those industries are monopolized, it's not because of some American cultural or political artifact.