Week 06 One Question Response - Monopoly Power

in #gradnium3 years ago

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This is a response to the one question option asking "How can a return to federalism make it more difficult for powerful corporations to exert monopoly power?"

According to the lecture given by Dr. Bylund, the implementation of federalism, or minimal governmental involvement in the market, is the solution to monopoly power all together. When you sit and analyze the issues of monopolies, it becomes abundantly clear that it's not the powerful organizations that are the issues, but rather the regulations they are bound to. Adding more regulations to "fix" the issues created by the previously instated regulations will only snowball into more issues followed by more regulations. It's a vicious cycle and one that begs to be looked at as a warning to socialism. 
During his lecture, Dr. Bylund spent a significant amount of time analyzing Apple and due to the relevance and general understanding of the public, I will as well. Apple has largely continued to rapidly innovate and gain more and more ground on any companies that could try to compete. For this reason, people believe there is a need regulations on companies like Apple to help encourage more competition for others. Here's why this isn't a necessity though. As we know, Apple products are very expensive, but as consumers, we have made it abundantly clear that we value the products to be worth the money they are listed at. Because of this, the consumers are the ones who created and handed Apple the monopoly in the first place. By continuously purchasing their products, we have told Apple that they are pricing their products intelligently. 
The idea just stated is what causes consumers to fear a monopoly (that we have created by the way). Consumers fear that companies that control a market in a way similar to Apple will be able to drastically increase their prices a have a hold over products that consumers have established to be a necessity in today's society. Why is this not going to happen? The ~generally~ unregulated market would very quickly take advantage of Apple's decision to increase their prices. They would do this by attempting to enter the market with something that consumers would consider to be more valuable for the money they are paying. If Apple decided to double their prices, it would open the opportunity for other smartphone competitors like Samsung to create something that consumers believe to be "more bang for their buck" and that is exactly why Apple wouldn't do that.
A company like Apple or one similar in power would ultimately be idiotic to increase prices beyond a reasonable range because they would encourage people to try other products. Because Apple was the first smartphone and has continuously developed newer and better versions, many consumers haven't tried other smartphone options, but given the consumers start to wonder if the product is worth the price, Apple could push consumers to other companies that they had never considered up to this point.