Another Quora question I answered.

You mean like how the (insert region) government eliminates all competitors for the services it provides by using its connections with armed thugs who are willing to do whatever they ask as long as they get paid?

It always strikes me as amusing that the assumed worst case scenario of a wholly free-market/libertarian society is exactly the scenario we live under today: one monopolistic centralized group controlling nearly everything.

Yes, people with many resources (wealth, friends, connections, etc) can wield that power for underhanded reasons. But people do that in government today (witness the rampant corruption and cronyism that is perenially uncovered by the media). If that is a reason to indict a free system then it must be equally leveled against the system we have today.

The key point is that in a free system no one is the “ruler” over everyone else, so without a lot of the artificial barriers to entry that the government/state create there will be more, not fewer competitors for various goods and services. If you want to start a business no one is going to stop you, you don’t need permission, you don’t need a license, all you need to do is provide a product the customer wants to stay in business.

Ultimately if someone tries to buy all these new competitors out or off or what have you, there is a limit to how far that will go – at some point you run out of money or reach a point where more buy offs don’t make sense. Witness the US government, as wealthy and powerful as it is, it can’t buy off every country in the world to allow them to dictate policy everywhere. Granted, they try, but there is a limit even for an entity that large. So I don’t suppose in a free system where the “rich” companies would have to compete for customers first by providing products they want vs a state that can simply take (tax) the money they need that any company would rise to a size or level anywhere approaching the power of any state or national government, hence the risk of such concentrated power should be accordingly that many orders of magnitude smaller relative to the same concern one would have about a regional government over stepping its bounds of authority in the same way.