Should the government be allowed to break up monopolies?

Teddy Roosevelt says yes. If it wasn't for him, the railroad companies would have taken this country over.

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Teddy Roosevelt says yes. If it wasn't for him, the railroad companies would have taken this country over.

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The same railroad companies that were granted land by the U.S. government who had no reasonable claim to the property?

Solid point. Agreed.

Once the monopolies are in place though - should the government break them up or let the free market work?

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I say no. Just let the free market work itself out.

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your ma bell argument was weak sauce. wireless carriers would have taken care of that monopoly without the government driving a spike through their heart.

i guess you still think smith corona and kodak have monopolies too?

The founding fathers were pretty clear that the breakup of monopolies were supposed to be one of the few functions of central government. I'll heed their advice.

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The same railroad companies that were granted land by the U.S. government who had no reasonable claim to the property?

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swap "Comcast" and "ISPs" for "railroad" and you have the current environment we're in now.

While I do think the government should be allowed to do this, they obviously don't do a very good job of it if there is ever a single corporation that can ever be considered "too big to fail".

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I say no. Just let the free market work itself out.

Who's with me?

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Not me. Monopolies skew the market and stifle competition by driving the production cost to ridiculously low levels so that in inhibits new entries into the market place. The wireless companies could not have come about without the government breaking up Ma Bell who had a near true monopoly on the phone lines which also meant long distance.

It's always nice to say "let the free market handle this", but the purpose of the monopoly is to be the market. Most of the monopolies end up not liking capitalism once they get really big. They want to control the means of production and distribution. It also depresses wages and inhibits upward financial mobility

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Should the government be allowed to break up monopolies?

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Yes. It is not a free market when there is only 1 or a few players in it. In fact, I think that we should set a market cap number, say 10B, and when a company gets that big, they have to split up. I wish that every little town in the US didn't look like rubber stamps of each other with a Autozone on one end and a McDonalds and Burger King on the other. I wish Walmart was still a regional company. I wish there were 10 American car companies and not just a big 3. I wish Amazon had real competition. I wish we hadn't allowed every oil company to go hyphenated and that Continental airlines was still around.

I’m sure you can probably find it. Jefferson and Washington, for sure, were anti-monopoly. I’m pretty sure Franklin was. Hamilton was not. Do not remember about Adams. Madison was anti-monopoly.

I’ve read several biographies of each, and they’re quoted about their stances.

In short, their idea for America was to be a militarily neutral nation of commerce and agriculture.