this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Yes. That's how capitalism operates. There is nothing in capitalist system that prevents monopolies from happening, in fact they kind of encouraged. And patent system is as capitalist as it gets. It was born as an answer to a question "how do we collectively insure that companies can own everything they want to own", and the government exists to enforce the rules that rich people and companies want to have (getting back to lobbying). If you get rid of the government, you will get cyberpunk corporate wars, and then when people will get tired of that, they will come up with the same government-like structure.
That's how crony capitalism works, free market capitalism is free from such bounds by definition. Monopolies could also form without the government but they clearly form with the help of those government regulations allowing them to do so as well, see: basically the entire medical industry. We have the worst of both worlds, tbh either socialized healthcare or an end to the racketeering scheme we call the medical industry by freeing the market (things like removing drug patents to make the market competitive and lowering price, etc) would he better than this crony capitalist bullshit we have now. Patents are again antithetical to free market capitalism, that is literally part of what is referenced by "free" in the term. Proponents of free market capitalism ignore patent and IP laws entirely or think they should be limited to a short period (typically 15-20y with no renewal depends on who you talk to).