Apple: A Better Trust-Buster Than Government
Yesterday, the Supreme Court made a new ruling regarding anti-trust laws. All four Democrats and Justice Brett Kavanaugh voted that Apple does count as an illegal monopoly and could be sued on that basis. A day later, the Disney corporation bought a third of Hulu from Comcast, but that doesn’t matter.
I understand the word “monopoly” basically just means “any company I don’t like,” but this still bothers me. This will be controversial to say these days, but we live in a time where creating a monopoly is downright impossible. Here’s a question: Have you ever noticed how everyone who believes Facebook is a monopoly has a Twitter?
No monopoly can exist without government support. I already mentioned Disney, yet the only reason they have a monopoly is that they’ve managed to change the rules (remember the Micky Mouse Protection Act?) to keep in power. The WWE, which bought out its last competitor, is nearly the definition of cronyism. Don’t forget Vince McMahon is great friends with the President.
However, what has Apple done that’s so evil? According to Republicans supporting Kavanaugh, they have given us a product we enjoy for a convenient price that has many features we enjoy. Again, if you give poor people too much they might start thinking they’re people.
The truth is Apple does not have a monopoly in any area they engage in. You can still buy cellphones from Samsung and Blackberry, you can still buy laptops and computers from Windows, and so on. In fact, Apple actually busted the smartphone monopoly Blackberry had through creating the highly popular iPhone. Proving they are a better trust-buster than any government agency ever will be.
Over in the computer industry, the Apple MacBook is one of the few remaining competitors to Microsoft’s Windows. Their creation of iTunes in early 2001 brought a great amount of competition to the CD industry. The development of the now discontinued Safari led to great competition in the web browsers industry.
Yet, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday this is an example of a trust? The people who have not only broke monopolies but improved the quality of every product in every industry they enter are now the bad guys? How? Or at least, how does this make monopolies a bad thing? If this is what a monopoly looks like, I want much more of them.
