Comment by Log_out_
2 years ago
There should be a law that allows companies to self split once they become monopolies. As in a person can collect evidence of a monopolie and then can walk out of the busters office with the standalone part of the company thats the monopoly as a compamy of its own. Make those that conspire and lobby for the r monopolies those who would profit the most on busting.
I like the fundamental idea, but I don't like that structure. My own proposal would be progressive corporate taxation that gets increasingly punitive at extreme scale, intentionally pushing companies to split. We could set the "heel" of the curve higher than existing companies and inflate our way into it to give them plenty of time to prepare. We would need limitations on ownership to prevent "notionally separate but actually owned by the same people" cheating, but that's doable.
It will never happen, of course. The purpose of capitalism is not to serve customers by fostering competition, the purpose of capitalism is to give rich people an excuse to pay themselves for being rich. To establish, reinforce, and perpetuate a class hierarchy where the people on the bottom must constantly pay to exist while the people on top get paid to exist through their stocks, bonds, and real estate holdings. From this cynical perspective monopolies are a feature, not a bug. But if they were a bug, progressive taxation is how you would fix it.