The Application and Dangers of a Monopoly in an Industrializing Economy From the Perspectives of Consumers and Laborers

This paper seeks to analyze the possible harms and benefits a monopoly provides to consumers and laborers and what compromise could be established to mend current faults of such a system. This paper first analyzes the negative and positive aspects of monopolies. Monopolies are effective in centralizing capital and administration, which allows for unprecedented, exponential growth. Monopolies also place market power in the hands of their shareholders by stripping consumers and laborers of it. It then further analyzes such effects in industrializing nations of two different time periods: the American Gilded age and the modern Indian Industrial Revolution. The American Gilded Age was characterized by explosive growth in the heavy industry sector, with powerful oligarchs such as Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller gaining significant wealth and market power over consumers and laborers, leading to exploitation. The modern Indian Industrial Revolution is similarly characterized by such oligarchs with the likes of Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani, and Ratan Tata gaining significant wealth and control to the point of near-monopolistic control over certain sectors. It thus proposes an alternative of government-run monopolies in democracies to ensure market power stays in the hands of the majority, which also make up the consumers and laborers, while maintaining the benefits of it. An alternative is also mentioned where governments themselves act as investors to incentivize several sectors of the economy while maintaining a sort of control.