We have antitrust law for that. But antitrust law today is simply overwhelmed by the huge number of monopolies and oligopolies the government has created in almost every sector. And courts don't have the power to correct the problem by reducing the regulations that protected the monopolies in the first place, making their remedies temporary.

I agree with the first part of your statement but disagree quite strongly with the idea that the government created them. Monopolies and oligopolies are the natural product of unchecked capitalism. Without government activily enforcing antitrust and breaking up monopolies you naturally end up with companies having a stranglehold on their sector.

I do not believe what we have had forming in the United States (since at least the 60s) is a “monopoly status” moment.

I usually see cronyism described through the lens of the market - the industrialist uses their market position to gain influence in the government.

But what happened this time appears to be the inverse. The government granted cronies market dominance by regulating away their competition. In exchange for this, there is an unspoken rule that when the government shows up with a “request” the cronies treat it as a demand.

We’ve seen this mechanism be used to launder away constitutional protections by having the stages of enforcement cross the private/public boundary. What the government hand can’t do, they rely on the market hand to do, and vice versa. Two hands, same system, but exploiting a bug in the system.

I call this crony totalitarianism. It’s not a capitalism or constitutional republic thing. It’s people who have found exploits in the system so that they can work around capitalism and the constitution.

You’re right in that government is a monopoly in most cases.

Even if that were true, by definition not every company reaches monopoly status, so all others can fail too, unlike the government, so this argument against the GP's claim does not hold.