[WalterBright]

How the mighty monopolies have fallen:

IBM Sears RCA Intel GE Disney Kmart Kodak Novell Lotus Wordstar AT&T Microsoft

without any push from the government.

> Even good social safety net enhance freedom of economic activity

No actual evidence of that. The US boomed for 150 years before there was a social safety net. The greatest lifting of people out of poverty ever seen.

[dns_snek]

> How the mighty monopolies

How some mighty monopolies have fallen. Your examples don't refute GP's point, unless you'd like to assert that monopolies and oligopolies don't exist anymore.

> The greatest lifting of people out of poverty ever seen.

How do you square that with the fact that United States, with your platonic ideal of economic policies, has the highest rate of poverty in the developed world?

[WalterBright]

I didn't say they didn't exist. I said that history shows they don't last.

> has the highest rate of poverty in the developed world?

The poverty rate in the US was declining until 1968, when it started going back up. What happened in 1968? Welfare.

[no_exit]

> The US boomed for 150 years before there was a social safety net.

The social safety net was a continent's worth of land to settle and develop.

[WalterBright]

I suggest reading up on the hardships the settlers had. Their death rate was pretty high. Tens of thousands died on the Oregon Trail.

[shiroiushi]

>How the mighty monopolies have fallen: >IBM Sears RCA Intel GE Disney Kmart Kodak Novell Lotus Wordstar AT&T Microsoft >without any push from the government.

How has Disney fallen? Last I checked, they seem to be doing better than ever, and have gobbled up so many IP franchises they look more like a monopoly than ever (Star Wars, Marvel, etc.).

Microsoft sure hasn't fallen either. Windows isn't quite as dominant as before, but MS got even bigger by moving to cloud stuff instead of just relying on Windows/Office.

Sears was never a monopoly of any kind, that I remember. Neither was Kmart, or Wordstar, or GE. AT&T, formerly Bell, was a monopoly and got a huge push from the government in the form of a forced break-up in the 80s. The AT&T of modern times (the cellular company) was never a monopoly of any sort.

[WalterBright]

Fallen from their dominant market position.

[shiroiushi]

Who cares? The only thing that's important to a company is profitability. I can't be bothered to do any research, but I'm pretty sure MS is just as profitable as ever, if not moreso.