The Power Of Consumers

Monopolies often have negative reputations in the modern world, with many regarding companies that reach a certain size or amass a certain amount of social influence as hazards to the communities around them.  A handful of arguments might be used to defend this conclusion, although each rests on various assumptions and fallacies.  One such complaint is the charge that monopolies discourage product quality.  According to this idea, removing competition also removes key incentives to enhance products--or perhaps even to maintain their existing level of quality.

However, even a massive monopoly does not necessitate that a given firm's products will diminish in their reliability, consistency, or usefulness.  The aforementioned argument against monopolies rests on non sequitur scare tactics used by those who dislike large corporations simply because they reached some arbitrary size.  While monopolies can involve massive companies, there is nothing inherently negative about large firms, even when there is no competition to rival them.  Size does not determine whether a company will use its power as an excuse to mislead, trample on, or otherwise hurt customers, much less lower the quality of its products.

Moreover, even if a company did lower its standards (or descend into some sort of moral deficiency) because of the lack of competitors, it is not as if no one at all can challenge its power if if misuses it.  Consumers can boycott the company or otherwise pressure it to acknowledge and bow to legitimate demands for improvement.  Even when there is not an alternate company to buy from, the buyers can limit or eliminate their purchases in order to bring about some sort of corporate change.  If no one is willing to buy from a firm, whatever influence it has will inevitably erode.

Individual consumers might feel as if they have little to no genuine power to shape the corporate world despite the fact that businesses cannot function without their revenue.  Nevertheless, they wield the very power to contribute to outcomes that can elevate or destroy miscellaneous businesses, despite the significance of a single standard purchase being fairly low on its own.  However, the collective withholding of money from companies of enormous size is far from an insignificant phenomenon.  It is because of this that no monopoly can ever preserve its power by conventional means as long as it is not supported by consumers.

Monopolies might intimidate or concern some individuals, but there is nothing intrinsically problematic about a hypothetical (or actual) company either buying all of its rivals or driving them out of business.  The quality and ethical approach of the firm does not have to change as a result.  Corporations can possess a great degree of power--whether or not they have monopolized one or more markets--but the power of consumers can be comparably impressive.  Businesses cannot sustain themselves perpetually without consumer support.  Eventually, they must at least partially accommodate major demands.