How Do Libertarians Deal With Monopiles

[u/OkPreparation710]

In wake of the Presidential Election, I have been reading and learning more about alternative ideologies. Libertarianism - particularly Minarchy - has stood out the most to me, but I cannot fathom how monopiles are dealt with. I understand that some people say that if the market is free with no regulations, then there can only ever be a monopoly by having such a good product, but what is there to stop business owners bribing smaller businesses to sell their business to them. For example, if Company A is the largest company in a sector. Then you have many smaller companies. What is stopping the owner of Company A from bribing the owners of all the smaller companies to sell their companies to Company A? Company A could then acquire all the competitors in the market, and hence a monopoly is created.

Sorry if this is naïve, but I just cannot wrap my head around it.

Thanks!

Edit: I just realised I spelt monopolies as monopiles, but I cannot change the title

Edit 2: Thank you for your help everyone, I understand now and the example of Thames Water in London has definitely reinforced the rest of your comments about monopolies being propped up by the Government most of the time

[u/Ghost_Turd]

Don't make the mistake of assuming that monopolies are, in and of themselves, bad things. They are (unless brought about by government meddling) a natural feature of a free market, and important signals about consumer wants and needs.

[u/bb0110 → u/Ghost_Turd]

Curiously, if a company were to take over a highly complicated and complex formulation for a medicine, lets say a cure for cancer, and jacked up the price to a ridiculous amount then proceeded to either buy or sabotage in some way every company that tried to replicate said drug, you are ok with that?

[u/buchenrad → u/bb0110]

Using force to limit competition is a criminal act and does not require antitrust legislation to enforce.

Let everyone voluntarily participate in the market and prosecute those who use force and the market will sort itself out.

[u/bb0110 → u/buchenrad]

I never said force. In a truly free market you can buy up any competitor you want and it is completely legal.

[u/Professional_Golf393 → u/bb0110]

So what’s a legal example of sabotage that you referenced earlier?

[u/bb0110 → u/Professional_Golf393]

There are endless possibilities. One example would be identifying the smaller companies vertical and either buying those companies that the company relies on or leveraging their large size and getting those companies into an exclusivity agreement leading to the smaller company not being able to get something that is needed and essentially not being able to produce what they need for a time, having cashflow issues then closing.

[u/Professional_Golf393 → u/bb0110]

So in your cancer drug example, having an exclusivity agreement with a supplier? (that presumably also has a monopoly on production of the precursor). It doesn’t really sound like sabotage to me.

I would say that precursor supplier will face the same challenges maintaining their monopoly within an entirely free market. The problem fixes itself.