No problem. So much has changed in America since Reagan. Capitalism is a great system, when it is actually real capitalism, which is based upon competition. Lots of competition.
Sadly, the goal of so many large companies is to eliminate competition to gain total market control. We’re down to three cellular companies: T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Radio and TV stations? Five major corporations control them all. Comcast owns NBC, MSNBC, Universal Studios and Film Production. AT&T owns CNN, Warner Brothers films and music, HBO, and others. As you start looking into it, it becomes more and more frightening.
Who competes with Amazon, who now owns Whole Foods, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, a whole fleet of airplanes, and trucks that will soon compete with FedEx and UPS. 60% of their revenue comes from Amazon Web Services who provide the cloud computing to hundreds of companies. Listen to Spotify? AWS hosts it. Watch Netflix?AWS hosts it. It is pretty hard to get a client list of AWS. But they make way more money from AWS than they do from selling us stuff delivered quickly.
Who competes with Google which owns YouTube, the Google Ad Network, reCAPTCHA, and Android? Who competes with Facebook, which owns WhatsApp and Instagram?
The concentration of economic and political power is in the hands of a very few giant corporations, led by insanely wealthy people whose only goal is more money. Due to Citizens United, we have no constraints over how much these giant corporations can donate to political PACs and towards lobbyists to actually write legislation their way.
Look into meat and poultry processors and see how that industry in concentrated in a few large companies. Burgers? McDonald’s, Jack in the Box, and Burger King are all franchises operating worldwide who control the majority of that business. In ‘n Out is a family-owned Burger chain in the western United States. There are a few smaller chains, certainly less than ten.
45% of all the beer sold in America comes from ONE company…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anheuser-Busch_brands
How about Constellation Brands? The company has more than 100 brands in its portfolio. Wine brands include Robert Mondavi, Richards Wild Irish Rose, Ravenswood Winery, Wild Horse Winery, Clos du Bois, Franciscan Estates, Kim Crawford, Meiomi, Mark West, Ruffino, and The Prisoner.
Constellation’s beer portfolio includes imported brands such as Corona, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, and Pacífico, as well as American craft beer producer Funky Buddha.
Spirits brands include Svedka Vodka, Casa Noble Tequila and High West Whiskey, Nelson’s Green Brier Tennessee Whiskey.
But booze is still pretty competitive in the consumer’s choice of what they want to drink away their troubles. Take a look. It doesn’t look like any of these companies have a monopoly.