I'd add that the FDA observed that market forces bring prices down basically in a very straight-forward linear way: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-ev

I'd add that the FDA observed that market forces bring prices down basically in a very straight-forward linear way: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/generic-competition-and-drug-prices https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-res... We also know that as Google Fiber entered any city the incumbent ISP immediately decreased its price. Natural monopoly is a strange concept. Its formal definition by Baumol: "[a]n industry in which multi-firm production is more costly than production by a monopoly". ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly#/media/File:Natural_monopoly.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly#/media/File:N... ) It sounds like it's almost true in every case where you are forced to duplicate components/processes/efforts/structures, plus even with diminishing returns economies of scale helps the big companies. Of course why the big incumbents get complacent/inefficient, why they turn to regulatory capture instead of R&D, is a different question.