We did a presentation about monopolies to enlighten students in about what exactly monopolies were. Some examples of monopolies, such as Henry Ford’s monopoly on automobile industry and John D. Rockefeller’s monopoly over oil (Standard Oil Company), were discussed.

We also talked about how monopolies can be acquired: having much more affluence, resources, and/or technology than other corporations, so these colossal corporations can mass produce goods and sell them for much cheaper than all of the less wealthy, smaller firms. Because their goods become so cheap, everyone starts buying from the huge corporations and all of the smaller ones go out of business, sadly. Then, when the giant corporation has extensive control over the commodity, they have absolutely no competition, and they are the only company selling the commodity. Therefore, they can raise the prices drastically, which is extremely detrimental to consumers and their wallets. It is especially devastating when the item that the company holds a monopoly over is a necessity that everyone needs to survive, because for something like diamonds, if there was a monopoly over them, people could just stop buying diamonds and it wouldn’t be the end of the world. However, for something like oil (for gasoline), cars, cell-phone providers, food, water, or television providers, just to name a few examples, there is much more demand for these commodities, which exacerbates the deleterious effects on consumers.

We contrasted monopolies and oligopolies: Oligopolies, in contrast with monopolies, are when just a few large companies have ultimate power over an industry. We gave them examples of oligopolies, such as cell-phone providers (T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.-at the time where T-Mobile and Sprint had not yet become unified).

We also explained how monopolies occur when gigantic companies buy up all of their competition, like in Agar.io, when one player engulfs all of the other circles and expands dramatically in the process. We connected this with mergers and acquisitions: When these happen, 2 separate companies become just 1, allowing that one company to gain much more power in the market. Mergers are when two companies agree to work together and help each other out, while acquisitions are when one company takes over another and the one taken over ceases to exist.