South Korea is stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping

Then people can move elsewhere. People won't tolerate it forever. This can be seen in the real estate market in the city I live in. Several downtown blocks in prime locations have a single owner. She charged outrageous rents, and now half of these (prime) locations are empty, and new businesses have cropped up in the neighborhoods around the downtown core.

> 2) Vertical monopolies. If your company buys out not just the competition, but the entire supply chain, and there is a high cost of entry to being able to enter the market -- say automobiles -- then you can quash competition as it arises.

While this is possible in theory, it hasn't happened in a free market.

> 3) Coal mines. If the only job you can get is in a coal mine, and the operator of said mine owns all the mines in your geographic region, you don't have much of a choice. This is especially true if you are working 12+ hours a day 7 days a week for a pittance, or are a minor child.

I live in a country where people will travel 4000 KM for a job. People will move if they perceive economic conditions to be unfavourable. If enough people do this, the mine owner will be forced to raise wages or face a shortage of labour.

> 4) This is libertarian fantasy and rightfully deserves the scorn and ridicule it has so far received in this thread.

Only Americans would make an accusation of political bias in a discussion such as this, using such terms (libertarian).

Fact is, the study of economics is the same whether you're in a market economy or a controlled economy (and likewise whether you vote right, left, or centre). And most economies are mixed BTW.

> Backroom deals AKA corruption. Corruption and regulation are two sides of the same coin.

You seem to labor under some obtuse notion that the state governments were the subject of the backroom deals. Let me dispel that for you, by quoting from the article cited that you apparently couldn't be bothered to read:

> In a seminal deal, in 1868, the Lake Shore Railroad, a part of the New York Central, gave Rockefeller's firm a going rate of one cent a gallon or forty-two cents a barrel, an effective 71 percent discount from its listed rates in return for a promise to ship at least 60 carloads of oil daily and to handle the loading and unloading on its own

> Rebates, preferences, and other discriminatory practices in favor of the combination by railroad companies; restraint and monopolization by control of pipe lines, and unfair practices against competing pipe lines; contracts with competitors in restraint of trade; unfair methods of competition, such as local price cutting at the points where necessary to suppress competition; [and] espionage of the business of competitors, the operation of bogus independent companies, and payment of rebates on oil, with the like intent.

> The general result of the investigation has been to disclose the existence of numerous and flagrant discriminations by the railroads in behalf of the Standard Oil Co. and its affiliated corporations. With comparatively few exceptions, mainly of other large concerns in California, the Standard has been the sole beneficiary of such discriminations. In almost every section of the country that company has been found to enjoy some unfair advantages over its competitors, and some of these discriminations affect enormous areas.

> Almost everywhere the rates from the shipping points used exclusively, or almost exclusively, by the Standard are relatively lower than the rates from the shipping points of its competitors. Rates have been made low to let the Standard into markets, or they have been made high to keep its competitors out of markets. Trifling differences in distances are made an excuse for large differences in rates favorable to the Standard Oil Co., while large differences in distances are ignored where they are against the Standard. Sometimes connecting roads prorate on oil—that is, make through rates which are lower than the combination of local rates; sometimes they refuse to prorate; but in either case the result of their policy is to favor the Standard Oil Co. Different methods are used in different places and under different conditions, but the net result is that from Maine to California the general arrangement of open rates on petroleum oil is such as to give the Standard an unreasonable advantage over its competitors

> The evidence is, in fact, absolutely conclusive that the Standard Oil Co. charges altogether excessive prices where it meets no competition, and particularly where there is little likelihood of competitors entering the field, and that, on the other hand, where competition is active, it frequently cuts prices to a point which leaves even the Standard little or no profit, and which more often leaves no profit to the competitor, whose costs are ordinarily somewhat higher

Note that the word "government" appears nowhere in any of these allegations. All of these backroom deals existed with other market participants.

If you redefine "corruption" to mean "not involving the government whatsoever" then your points are indeed true, but you are then proving the exact opposite of your initial assertion that "only governments can create monopolies".

Anyway, it's not clear if you're a troll or ignorant at this point, and I doubt that further effort to dispel your quaint notions will be worth my invested time.

Anyone who pretends that economists agree on anything is not worth taking seriously.

I suspect we need a new term for what we want. "Capitalism" is too sullied by use.