I’ve read that many monopolies were formed due to government intervention (i.e. they gave Standard Oil and certain railroad businesses access to areas and land that other companies weren’t, etc.). Do you guys know of any detailed instances that the government did which led to the formation of specific monopolies and large corporations. And I’m not talking about government-run monopolies, by the way.
For me, the standard example is the AT&T monopoly. Adam D. Thierer, in a Cato Journal article, wrote a great piece detailing the history of the telephone industry. It’s amazing how much competition there was after the Bell patent expired, and what happened when the government started intervening.
Just as valuable is Tom DiLorenzo’s The Myth of Natural Monopoly.