What self regulating existed in 2008? Banking and finance have been hyper regulated for decades. There are no industries more regulated than those. There was no self-regulating and you won't be able to point to any substantial self-regulating that caused the housing bubble and crash (unless you're talking about the Fed's low interest rate policies). The SEC, Fed, FHA, CFPB, and Treasury were intentionally looking the other way while vast fraud was occurring because all of the voters were getting rich off of housing and stock market bubbles. The Fed was laughing during their meetings about the bubble, you can read the minutes today.
Oh yeah, and guess what, housing is higher today than it was at the bubble peak (and so is the stock market mini-bubble today). So are we self-regulated again now? Nope, we're even more regulated now, with all the big banks directly and strictly under control of the Fed; it all has to do with artificially low interest rates, which is universally understood at this point - the Fed now openly admits to creating asset inflation to try to spur the economy.
There are industries which tend naturally toward monopolies, with transport, communications, broadcast, and software among them. There are also industries which tend naturally away from monopolies, such as sandwich shops, cement providers, and laundromats.
(Not that there cannot be some concentration, or even national chains among these. But they're rarely dominant.)
Transport, comms, banking, and information technology, tend toward monopolies.
Consulting is a mixed bag -- if you're relying on creativity, not so much, but if you're relying on marketing and business contacts, both of which are far more a network effect (with strong lock-in elements), yes. Contrast your typical small-gig design shop vs. the Big Declining n Accounting Firms, or IBM and Oracle (consulting / business services).
Retail can be local (small effects) or global: large grocery stores, WalMart, Amazon.
There are other effects as well. I've been curious about Maersk's adoption of ultra-large cargo ships, even as shipping volumes have been falling. While there's a financing-design-build lag, there's also the possiblity that having and operating a large ship puts pressures on other operators -- if you're operating and loading, you're taking cargo which would go onto smaller vessels.
It's complicated.
Part of this also plays into concepts of what and how technological mechanisms actuall function: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/klsjjjzzl9plqxz-ms8nww
I'd include among "network effects" urban and even empirical structures.
Lobbying from these industries players for bad regulation might have helped but regulation is usally nothing bad. I'm happy in EU knowing that most stuff I can buy is at least to some degree vetted for killing me.
Nope, you do not even need to commit crimes to be targeted by the DOJ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
https://news.vice.com/article/is-the-doj-forcing-banks-to-te...
Payday loan companies in particular were hit hard by Operation Choke Point in 2013 (I worked at a "lending startup" that was targeted and had to pivot; a lot of payday/consumer lending companies ended up shutting down).
But payday loan companies and credit cards that charge 29% interest plus hundreds of dollars in feeds to "help people with poor credit" are fine.
Supporting US government entities in defense that kill tons of innocent people every day; that's fine too.
Self regulating? Man that works so well, especially in 2008. We're going to let you keep doing that too.
Weed stores in states where it's legal? Hi it's the DEA. We're confiscating these accounts for you. Here's a fine (at least until later this year, but still only for medicinal marijuana)
It's a cluster fuck of bullshit. Of course you can always use a different payment provider, but with PayPal being just so damn easy with very little competition, it's like saying if Amazon removed your eBook, just publish it somewhere else. The trouble is the distribution networks are so big that they become the only means of distribution. If you control 90% of the market and shut down a DropBox competitor, you're choosing which companies succeed.