The goal of a profit-seeking entity is to maximize profit. That is achieved by becoming a monopoly. Competition is just the consequence of multiple entities trying to become a monopoly - there can be only one. This is the motive part of market economy. The energy source.
Now, monopolies are obviously bad for society. Therefore, markets are regulated to prevent monopolies. This turns the market into an engine. You have constant inflow of upstarts dreaming of riches, fighting each other out to reach the throne of a monopolist, only to be denied it by regulation, and eventually become broken and/or pushed out by the younger followers.
Or, via another analogy: the market economy is designed like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick attached to the animal, while standing on a treadmill. Being surprised that monopoly is the goal of companies is like being surprised the donkey would chase the carrot.
Markets are regulated to enable monopolies. Bell would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't the regulation involved in laying copper and Microsoft would have never become a monopoly if there wasn't intellectual property regulation.
For Microsoft: I think that's a weird argument. Plus I think there would have been lots of things pushing towards a single big player for desktop computing in the early-middle days (network effects).
Same goes for Microsoft. Everyone and their brother would have released their own 'Windows' if regulation weren't there to disallow it. Again, that regulation offered a moat which allowed them to establish their monopoly.
On the Ms point.. is your argument that we should have no intellectual property rights for software at all? It seems odd to single out only this example. I’m broadly not in favour of software patents but I’m not clear that they were relevant to MS success anyway. I think you need to make a clearer argument about what regulations we would have forgone for others to really evaluate your case.
Obviously not. That would require opinion, and sharing opinion is in bad faith. Discussion is merely for talking about how the world is. And as the way the world is, a monopoly needs some kind of moat to emerge. Intellectual property regulation exists to enable such moats.
> It seems odd to single out only this example.
Why? One example is all that is necessary to convey the idea.
But also, it is the only convicted monopolist in that respect that I could think off off the top of my head. Google was recently charged, but not yet convicted, so I could not include them. I am not about to suggest that other companies are monopolies based on my opinion. That, again, would be in bad faith. But, theoretically, the same could apply to other companies. It is not something that needs to be strictly limited to Microsoft.
Indeed. It's so obvious and apparent that even Adam Smith himself made this exact point.
Industries where direct competition is allowable do not suffer from these problems.
No, they suffer much worse. Haven't you noticed how all goods and services go to shit over the years? This is not an accident, this is competition optimizing out any quality it can get away with removing.
No. I can't think of anything I buy that I would want to go back in time with. The quality in my experience has only improved, often dramatically. Those who try to skimp on quality get destroyed by the competition. What are you referring to?
The only thing I can think of that you might be referring to – based on what I hear other say, not based on my own buying habits – is things like appliances where manufacturers have really dug deep into computerization so that they can enjoy the same legal moats other tech companies do. But what you are experiencing there is the lack of competition we spoke of earlier.