Incorrect. Monopolies do not naturally occur in most markets (with a few exceptions). The barriers to entry that create monopolies arise largely from regulatory capture. Some level of regulation is often necessary, but devising regimes that don't favor early entrants is very difficult. Nobody does this well; neither the US nor Europe.

> Monopolies do not naturally occur in most market

They naturally occur in markets with network externalities, which are quite common.

Often times, companies in the US lobby for regulation that adds barrier to entry. Of course economies of scale greatly contribute to barrier to entry, forcing an entrant to have large volume to even compete. I've read where large companies sell products cheaper than competitors can buy them wholesale. Once there are a few large competitors, mergers happen resulting in monopoly or near monopoly.

Of course industries like food service don't have monopolies, but they don't pay very well. They are also geographically restricted. I don't really care about those companies, they don't contribute much to the middle class.

Google is an effective monopoly, Amazon is certainly headed that way. Facebook is pretty close. Microsoft would be except the rare occurrence of someone writing a free operating system that was very good at the dawn of the internet age. Airlines are effective monopolies in their selective hubs. Monsanto certainly. They don't have to be the last company standing to show monopolistic tendencies in my mind. Microsoft wasn't technically a monopoly in the 90s, but it might as well have been.

They do if a company is able to do anything but make and sell products. The end goal of any company is to become monopoly.

Uber gets effectively shut down in France, leaving my region with just taxis and no price competition. Try finding a non Air France nonstop between Marseille and Paris or Paris to Bordeaux. It doesn't exist. Try finding nonstop flights between Houston and Dallas -- there are five different airlines with nonstop service.

Air France has a practically guaranteed monopoly within France; the only reason that monopoly doesn't extend past its borders is that international air transport agreements would make it impossible for Air France to control the entire French air transport system.

Where's that freedom to compete? If one argues that "Europe does it better," I might argue that either that person hasn't ever lived and done business in the US and hasn't lived and done business in Europe. Anyone that suggests that competition is protected in Europe (or in my case, specifically France,) has no idea what they're talking about. Competing against entrenched players in agriculture, transport, infrastructure and technology is excessively difficult. In the US anyone that can buy an airliner, get the FAA inspections can essentially start an airline. In France such an attempt would be met with violence. Air France itself attempted to start a budget airline in 2014 and strikes essentially shut down French aviation for over 11 days.

Protecting competition would mean the that the government wouldn't abide the labor monopolies that hamstring companies attempting to compete.

France does have monopolies -- although most of those monopolies are in labor -- and labor monopolies, otherwise known as unions are just as destructive as any other form of monopoly.

Europe does not do it better -- they just do it differently.

> Europe is much better at this than the US.

By Europe, I think you mean 3 or 4 countries in all of Europe. Most countries in Europe entirely fail at what you're claiming and most are embarrassingly behind the US on: innovation, productivity, median incomes, unemployment, global & domestic corporate competitiveness, research spending (both public and private).

I wasn't aware that Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Belarus, Lithuania, Romania, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, etc. had such stellar economies, that functioned at a high level with excellent competition and dynamism.

The majority of nations in Europe are backwards, poor (often extremely poor), mediocre at competition, with terrible median incomes, terrible median household net worth levels, perpetual unemployment problems, and very stagnant innovation within their economies. The results - among the nations I listed for example - when it comes to GDP per capita, median incomes, unemployment, exports, etc. all speak very loudly.

Many of the nicer countries in Europe, have rigid economic systems that are narrow industry dependent, non-innovative and stagnant. That includes Norway, Denmark and Finland (which is trying to crawl out of a ten year near-depression, and is heavily dependent on ancient industries like paper production). France has had a stagnant economy for decades with hyper low growth, rigid is an understatement there; if they grow median wages at 1/4th the rate of the US, it's considered a good outcome.

Germany would be in the middle of a ten year recession, were they not free riding on their Euro neighbors when it comes to benefiting from an artificially cheap currency (cheap for them).

Europe is not better than the US at facilitating competition, a very select few countries in Europe may be (Sweden for one). Europe is overwhelmingly dominated by dynastic corporations, handed down through the generations (Europe overall has a far worse stagnant dynastic wealth score than the US), and have almost entirely failed to keep pace with the US when it comes to spurring very successful new companies in the last 30 or 40 years. That proof is in how far behind nearly all (not all, nearly all) European nations are in rapid innovation fields like software, Internet, mobile, AI, biotech, robotics, VR/AR, etc.

But feel free to list all the amazing Internet, biotech, robotics, AI, Mobile, etc. firms in the highly dynamic & competitive Russia or Greek or Spanish or Polish markets.

If I was wrong, the results, the economic standing, for all those nations I listed, wouldn't be so horrible. Poland wouldn't have a $13k GDP per capita; Russia's median income wouldn't be 1/5th that of the US; Spain wouldn't have 20% unemployment (still); Bulgaria wouldn't have a median income that's nearly at third world levels; and so on.

> If I was wrong, the results, the economic standing, for all those nations I listed, wouldn't be so horrible.

What you are saying about the economies of those countries might be true, but it's not necessarily because they are worse at regulating capitalism. The effects of the Soviet Union, the size of the countries, language barriers, sanctions on Russia, problems with how the currency works, etc are enough to cause the things you mention even if they are better at making their markets more dynamic and competitive than the US. Countries with five million people like Norway, Denmark and Finland simply don't have enough people to have multiple strong industries simultaneously.

If USA is so innovative and Europe so backwards how come USA has trade deficit with EU?

The US has a $50 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Are we to argue that Mexico's business environment and economy is better and more innovative than the US? A trade deficit is not necessarily a bad thing.

Why is this being downvoted? This comment is factually correct.