>I'm more inclined to think that under a completely unregulated free market a monopoly today would instead be more likely to turn into a de-facto nation state o

>I'm more inclined to think that under a completely unregulated free market a monopoly today would instead be more likely to turn into a de-facto nation state over the course of decades Based on recent experience this does appear possible, that some monopolies have gotten savvy enough to become long-running nation-state-like entities if left unregulated. We know from the science of complex systems that one characteristic non-linear dynamic systems, like markets or national economies, is that the critical resources of the system tend to concentrate and consolidate over time. We’ve witnessed this over the past several decades with the deregulation of the US banking industry, its subsequent concentration and consolidation. Libertarians like to believe that such economic problems are self-correcting, that eventually such concentrations of wealth and economic power will either asymptotically collapse, or become ossified and be supplanted by something newer and innovative. Either way there’s a reset. But I don’t think either is inevitable, in all domains. What we’ve actually observed with the banking system is that: 1) powerful monopolies/oligopolies use their resources to capture the actual government and regulators, and use those entities to shape favorable laws, and to bail out the monopolies when they collapse, preventing the reset, and 2) even if the collapse and reset occurs, it causes far more damage and misery to the rest of the economy and society than to the people responsible for causing it. All else equal I’d rather live in a society that simply prevents those extreme cycles by making natural monopolies into well-regulated public utilities. Public utilities in the US have worked very well for a century, they’re a far more desirable economic arrangement for 99% of society.