Powers of Monopolistic Anarchy

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Powers of a Monopolistic Anarchy While the Microsoft Empire maintains its status as a vast company of large-scale production, readily contributing to the national GDP, and yielding high interest and profits to its associates, criticism and controversial accusations keep mounting. The thought of a monopoly as the economic device for good business seems almost mind-boggling to Microsoft’s competing corporations, as well as the entire economic community, legal and commercial. Why is monopoly such an undesirable practice? Why does the Microsoft Monopoly, in particular, violate the antitrust laws, and how far ought the government go in its efforts to regulate and fight such monopoly. What are the economic crimes that Microsoft is guilty of? Is it, in fact, true when the critics argue that, “Microsoft gained its dominance over 20 years... [which ended] with a virtual barrier to entry for rival operating system software markets“ (The Making of a Monopoly). Is it true that Microsoft has eliminated all of its concurrent competition, and stabilized its power to the extent of a complete monopoly. Or is there perhaps a validation for Microsoft’s practices in the saying that everything is fair in business. Two Theories of Monopoly Before mentioning the strength of Microsoft’s influence on domestic, as well as the foreign economy, it is crucial to examine the significance of a monopoly, and how it relates to a country’s fiscal structure. According to Webster’s dictionary, a monopoly is “the exclusive ownership and control of a commodity or service in a given market” (Webster’s Dictionary 337). Predictably, thought, there are degrees of control, and thus degrees of monopoly. The economic theory separates the idea of a monopoly into two distinct categories, a pure monopoly, and a natural monopoly. A pure monopoly means there is only one supplier of a product for
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