You have to start one step before this: Are there convincing arguments that this is a failure at all? Children's entertainment isn't an exclusionary arena, nothing about the number of options Disney provides prevents someone else from putting out option N+1. It was true on cable TV, and it's infinitely more true in the streaming world of today. In such a market, Disney's dominance need not mean anything more than being really good at servicing this market.

Copyright is really an orthogonal concern here. Yes, it certainly endows Disney with some rents that they shouldn't have, but their dominance is based on a continuous supply of new content, not derivatives of Mickey Mouse.

In all seriousness, Disney does not own my children's childhoods. I don't systematically exclude them, but it's certainly a minority in my household. It's not even something I've tried that hard to do.

We do not allow any clothes or items with a character in our house. So no shirts, no undies, no dolls, no toys. Most toys are more neutral, stuff like meliss & doug wood blocks.

Not surprisingly, non-character stuff tends to be way better quality.

We do have a few items from gifts over the years. Our 2 year old calls a gifted Minnie Mouse doll "Elmo". Makes me proud.

"Free" doesn't mean unregulated free-for-all, it specifically means that people are free to enter the market as buyers or sellers, and free to choose what and when to exchange, at what price. The government does not regulate who is allowed in the market, nor the prices; but rather would get involved by protecting those freedoms to engage & price.

Monopolies work against a free market, as do barriers to entry. Businesses make more money if the market is not free, i.e. if others in the market are not free to choose competitors' products or to become a competitor themselves. The "invisible hand" is about reflecting pricing movement of free exchange, not enforcing the freedoms. If a society wants a free market, they need to set up rules that promote market freedom as a societal goal, which would (ideally) end up working against individual profit maximization (compared to a usurpable market) but for greater overall robustness and correction.

The answer is economies of scale. Banks, for instance, have significant economies of scale. Bigger banks can lend for lower rates and offer better services overall. Ironically bigger banks are also safer [1].

So economists have to weigh the disadvantages of oligopolies against the advantage of efficient production. For instance you wouldn't want several electric grids competing against each other. On the other hand oligopolies can have powerful lobbies distorting the political process.

It's a complex balancing act overall. If you're interested, this is a field of economics called "industrial organization".

1. Canada, for instance, has only 6 banks, none of which failed in 2008. The problem with banks is their being over-leveraged (that is taking excessive risks) and inter-connectedness, as well as human shortsightedness and managerial incentives encouraging excessive risk taking. The problem with large banks is generally their political power.

> free-market

On the Disney topic their dominance doesn’t come from free-market but IP holding though. It’s a worse of both world situation where they fought hard to carve a protected niche for themselves.

Often the kind of “free-market capitalism” that leads to oligopolies benefit from regulatory protections and hurdles. Take away patents, financial regulations, and regulations that only large companies can afford which protect large incumbents and those oligopolies go away.

I'm reading this as "There are no oligopolies in the Wild (deregulated) West", and that doesn't feel intuitively true.

That is a misreading. I said often, not always.