Why do people always assume there's only two ways to deal with a monopoly? All you ever hear about in terms of dealing with monopolies are: 1) Break them up 2

Why do people always assume there's only two ways to deal with a monopoly? All you ever hear about in terms of dealing with monopolies are: 1) Break them up 2) Fine them From history we know that #1 is really friggin hard to get right (see: AT&T). We also know that #2 is usually ineffective and can harm consumers that are still locked into the monopoly. There's other options! * End the company (corporate death penalty). Auction off all their assets and force all their intellectual property into the public domain. * Force FRAND-style licensing of all their products and services. Make it so that if they want to make money they *require* 3rd parties to sell customized versions of their stuff. * A combination of forced public domain on their intellectual property and FRAND-style licensing. Possibly with forced selling of assets. Basically, just force the company out of whatever market they were abusing. Monopolists are always difficult to break up and there's always going to be negative consequences. Whole towns could go bankrupt as a result of ending a company! Thousands of workers could suddenly be jobless. The list of possible negative outcomes goes on and on. It behooves society to look past these short-term consequences though and look towards the future. The longer a monopoly goes on the more it stifles the future. It may feel like you're cutting off an arm when you end a really big, powerful company but it's more like cutting off a tree branch. More and better branches will grow in its place and younger, nearby trees will now have access to more sunlight. Unpopular opinion (here on VC-funded HN): The way capitalism is supposed to work is that large, old companies are meant to be overtaken by newer, more nimble ones. It shouldn't be so easy for large companies to acquire smaller ones. That's a big reason why tech monopolies persist! SO many of Microsoft's "staple" products wouldn't be part of their portfolio today if it weren't for acquisitions.