Monopolies

[Hellion]

:devil

I went to pay my storage unit bill at Shurgard,and the manager told me that they are being bought out by Public Storage.She told me that the idiot shareholders had alot to do with the merger,no doubt her pay is going to be lower or worse yet be fired.

I have seen this happen alot and I thought monopolies were illegal if it got out of hand.I myself are not that familiar with the whole concept of mergers,but this shit is getting out of hand,I lost a good job to this kind of BS before.IMO,soon there will be one company owning and running everything in the world.You will probably see businesses with names ,like "the Grocery Store,The Gas Station,The Convenience Store,The Hardware Store,The movie Theatre,The Fast Food Chain,etc,etc,etc.not good.

Whats your opinions on monopolies?

[BrassFusion]

:devil

I went to pay my storage unit bill at Shurgard,and the manager told me that they are being bought out by Public Storage.She told me that the idiot shareholders had alot to do with the merger,no doubt her pay is going to be lower or worse yet be fired.

I have seen this happen alot and I thought monopolies were illegal if it got out of hand.I myself are not that familiar with the whole concept of mergers,but this shit is getting out of hand,I lost a good job to this kind of BS before.IMO,soon there will be one company owning and running everything in the world.You will probably see businesses with names ,like "the Grocery Store,The Gas Station,The Convenience Store,The Hardware Store,The movie Theatre,The Fast Food Chain,etc,etc,etc.not good.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There are two kinds of monopolies- horizontal and vertical. Horizontal is the kind most people probably think of, where one big company tries to buy out or control the whole market, like Microsoft. A vertical monopoly is where a company controls every aspect of its own business, like McDonald's running farms of its own for the beef and grain. I believe that only horizontal monopolies are illegal, but it's touchy to judge what constitutes a monopoly in that case. How much of the market do you need to control before you have a monopoly?

I'm pretty neutral on the subject of mergers/downsizing. Sometimes some people get shafted, but really, if you're spending more on employees and overhead than you need to, why keep it up?