Joe Mansueto Quotes
Publishing had been successful where there had been natural geographic monopolies.
Mansueto, Joe. "How I Did It: Joe Mansueto." Inc., Mansueto Ventures, 1 Dec. 2005.
This volume roughly is to Islam what the Gospels are to Christianity. To most Muslims The Sunnah is a collection of holy material on the life of Mohammed. It is not of the force or importance as the Koran, but it is revered.
Patents, copyrights, and franchises are but 3 common (and legal) ways of obtaining a onopoly position.See Adam Smith {627790} for a similar thought.
Boeing had the foresight to invest in the concept of Air Mail by bidding low at the beginning, becoming the best in the nation, and then raising prices when no one else can compete—a technique called “buying in”. However, he was so successful that he soon had a monopoly on all the airmail in the country. Each new airmail contract would require more and more capability and Boeing used the existing contracts to finance the R&D and training of manpower to present a better and better service. Soon, no other company could compete at any price. Boeing indeed had a monopoly but each step of the building of it he did at the request of the government or was the low bidder and saved the taxpayer money. The airmail contracts were canceled and air service was nationalized. William Boeing was so disgusted by the way he was treated in the Congressional Hearings, that he sold his interest in the Boeing Company and would have nothing to do with making planes or providing services to the government thereafter.
This is an important quotation because Ellison, one of the best businessmen in the world is also much more candid than most others. Here he admits that he strives to achieve monopoly status for his company. Almost all large businesses try to become monopolies so that they do not have to compete on price, quality, and service. Few will admit publicly that much of their effort goes towards an objective that is detrimental to the nation and society and in is in large part illegal.
While this statement seems totally absurd to us today, at the time most politicians and judges believed it. Only the left wingers and the populists opposed the doctrine as well as most business owners who knew the truth but of course most preferred the have their own monopoly. One of the reasons the large American corporations did not want Jewish and Chinese immigrants is that those cultures supported highly competitive businesses and might give consumers a better deal or worse, their culture would argue for less monopoly and more competition. For more than half a century AT&T was given a monopoly over almost all telephone service in the United States. Finally the Federal Courts saw through the company propaganda, and ordered AT&T broken up. The “Baby Bells” have persuaded most state legislatures and regulatory bodies of this same argument, and almost every community of the United States has a monopoly on local wired local telephone service. The same is true about water and electricity and a great deal of American transportation. Every major company strives for as much of a monopolistic position the government will allow; some are overt like the electrical companies. Others are more subtle and use copyright and patents to be sure that there is no price or service competition. Fortunately, the high tech industry is to technologically competitive that prices have been have been going down constantly not like telephone and Internet connectivity, entertainment, education, and professional services.
Joseph Daniel Mansueto is an American billionaire entrepreneur; the founder, majority owner and executive chairman of Morningstar, Inc. and owner of Major League Soccer club Chicago Fire FC.
