I'd rather that too, but it is quite likely impossible. Technological innovation unleashed on the free market is what caused this. Monopoly is a natural end-goal of a company, and it's the usual job of governments to prevent companies from achieving that goal.

(Also, I don't think governments need to approach this problem by expanding scope of their control; they could use the control they already have. Just break up too big companies, and the next time someone gets this large, break them up too. No need for extra special regulations.)

The only way blockchains can be effective at combating large concentrations of tech power is by cooking the planet, so there's no more technological civilization, and quite probably, also no more humans.

I just can't see why the one technology that has unbounded energy waste problems and is primarily used for get-rich-quick schemes is also seen as a feasible way to solve societal problems.

These technologies broke up arguably worse monopolies, over information (Google democraticizing access to information) and media (Facebook and other social media companies breaking the hold that mass media had over people's opinions by giving them an avenue to directly communicate).

I think people forget how bad the mass media situation was. We had a handful of companies disseminate one way broadcasting to the entire population. The audience were passive viewers whose choices in programming were extremely limited, and who had very little ability to participate in the creation and curation of the media content.

So I don't think it's clear that the market, left to its own devices, doesn't evolve toward the direction of greater personal autonomy and empowerment, and it's certainly not clear that it doesn't have the potential to.

>>Monopoly is a natural end-goal of a company, and it's the usual job of governments to prevent companies from achieving that goal.

Bottom up switch over to open source is a viable market solution to market monopolies. If Android or Linux become the market standard in OSs for example, that is not a proprietary monopoly that gives one group control over the OS.

> I think people forget how bad the mass media situation was (...)

Good point. Come to think of it, Facebook is a huge improvement over what came before. Some could say that the pre-Facebook blogging era was better, but I don't think those times ever had a chance of growing to encompass regular people. Most of the people who now share their lives on social media wouldn't bother hosting their own blogs. This thought colors my next point:

> Bottom up switch over to open source is a viable market solution to market monopolies.

I don't buy it for the same reason I think Internet-of-blogs wasn't a stable state - it's much easier to take open-source code and turn it into business than it is to take a business and make it open source. Open source, by its nature, avoids attracting money, and money is exactly how you win mindshare. You say, "If Android or Linux become the market standard in OSs for example", but the truth is that the only Android that could become a market standard is the Google Android, and Linux has no chance in hell as long as Microsoft and Apple have money to better tailor (and market) their OSes to end users (regular people and corporations).

If anything, Open source has proven to be primarily successful for building blocks - libraries, frameworks, server operating systems, etc. Basically all the things that are not core to doing business. Sure, some of the things that open source displaced were market niches before - but they were all supporting infrastructure. The only sort-of-exception I can think of here is Google Chrome, but it only reduced Microsoft's monopoly, while enabling Google's monopoly.

Ironically, web browsers are what ultimately killed end-user open source software. With SaaS being the dominant model of software deployment these days, there is no open source. You don't know what code actually runs on third party servers. You can't run it yourself easily (or most commonly, at all). We've completely lost the ability to download, inspect, modify and share most of the software we use, and "in exchange", we also let third parties take our data hostage.

No, this development does not sound like open source being an alternative to market monopolies. In fact, it sounds like the exact opposite.

>>Some could say that the pre-Facebook blogging era was better, but I don't think those times ever had a chance of growing to encompass regular people.

Agree entirely.

>>the truth is that the only Android that could become a market standard is the Google Android, and Linux has no chance in hell as long as Microsoft and Apple have money to better tailor (and market) their OSes to end users (regular people and corporations).

Well Google Android has a much less entrenched position than Windows did, and it's precisely because it is open source. One can run non-Google Androids that are fully compatible with other Android apps, and Google would never be able to charge for its version for that reason.

>>Open source, by its nature, avoids attracting money, and money is exactly how you win mindshare.

While that's often the case, there are times where its nonproprietary nature facilitates its adoption. The fact that no one group owns an open source project can be an attractive feature, especially when disparate parties are looking for a common protocol or platform to collaborate through.

Cryptocurrency is both open source and attracts money. That's why I think blockchains might succeed against traditional web companies.

All-in-all I think our chances of being to solve the market monopoly problem with technology is good given the space of possible solutions. Of course this is just an opinion and I can't prove that it will work.

> I just can't see why the one technology that has unbounded energy waste problems and is primarily used for get-rich-quick schemes is also seen as a feasible way to solve societal problems.

I see where you're coming from, but cryptocurrencies are not the only use of blockchain.

That's a shame that bitcoin throws such a big shadow over everything else.

Do you have any resources on blockchains-but-without-cryptocurrency-applications? I'd love to read them to rebalance my perspective.

If, as you say, there is something worthwhile under the shadow of Bitcoin, I feel it really needs get itself a PR flashlight.

What would you consider an example of a monopoly being broken by the market rather than government intervention?

Android breaking Windows' monopoly on operating systems. It did so largely by eclipsing the desktop computer by facilitating the creation of a new mode of personal computing.

One could argue that TCP/IP and web standards like HTTP and HTML similarly made the desktop and its associated software (operating system, productivity suites, etc) less relevant, by increasing the ability of desktop users to access computing resources served by machines running different operating systems (e.g. a Linux server).

So what you're saying is that you can't break a monopoly through market forces, but merely wait out the monopoly market's relevance?

You can make the monopoly less relevant or irrelevant by superseding its market. Maybe saying that's a case of "breaking the monopoly" is a stretch, but the point is it's a valid solution to the problems of a monopoly, which emanate from the market and financial power its controller wields.

Politicians are already in the pockets of monopolies, that's why.

Look at Microsoft: their monopoly on the desktop was broken by the rise of mobile, so clearly by market forces. Monopolies just get replaced by other monopolies.

Not arguing about the politics, but there is no viable economic and/or technological strategy to compete against Facebook/Google from below. People have been trying for more than a decade already.