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I don't think your comment has exposed any flaws in GPs point.

The first point doesn't refute anything GP said. If Amazon, Google, Meta, etc, are natural monopolies like utilities, then have the state regulate them as such. If they aren't, have them broken up like Standard Oil. You yourself have pointed up that monopolies are bad for the users.

Second, even if "free market" is used by (some) economists to mean a specific thing, that doesn't mean that GP, or most people for that matter, use it that way. For many, many people (including elected policy makers), a "free market" is a market without government intervention, and the less intervention, the more free it is. Nobody owns the official definition of the term, redefining it and then calling the argument which used it in a different way "fundamentally flawed" is not correct.



In what way are any of the those companies a monopoly? Maybe I could see an argument about Apple in the USA but I don't see it for those 3.


Google owns most people's window to the internet: from the browser and sometimes even the operating system all the way to what sites they get to see, and even the content itself. Amazon handles most online shopping in the US, may have an even larger share in other countries. Meta owns most of the social networking and messaging apps of the world. I'd argue there's plenty of evidence that each is a monopoly in its own category, aggressively eliminating any competition from the market.




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