Reflection on Monopolies (part one)

 

In American television shows and movies, of Apple products are ubiquitous. Yes, every time a character is using a laptop, it’s a MACbook and every time they need to make a call it’s on an iPhone. Well, recently I’ve watched several TV series and Movies on Netflix or Amazon Prime that are British, French, and German productions. It seems that Apple doesn’t have a stranglehold monopoly in Europe because in the shows and movies, I saw (to my delight) a variety of phone and computer products in use. Some phones were Androids, some were Nokia, and the laptops on display were MACbooks (of course) but there were also HP and Dell Laptops. Some of you may think I’m just a grumpy old man, railing against Apple and its monopolistic practices, and you’d be right. But I ask you, how can we just idly stand by as a hand full of tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon control the overwhelming majority of market share. If you haven’t thought about the dangers of them combining into one big company that can serve our every need, I suggest you watch the movie Resident Evil (if you have a stomach for zombies) In the movie, The Umbrella Corporation has absolutely no competition. It provides every product and service one can imagine. In one of The Umbrella Corporation’s research labs, an accent releases a deadly virus that turns everyone into zombies. The metaphor here is sweet: We have all be turned into consumer zombies by these monopolies, even if we don’t have a proclivity to eat human flesh.