Concentration is the default in an unregulated environment. Sure pure monopolies with 100% market control are rare but concentration is rampant. A handful of companies dominating tech, airlines, banks, media.

> unless they get are granted special privileges by the government

That's what all the lobbyists are for.

None of the people or organisations that advocate for "free markets" or competition actually want free markets and competition. It's a smoke screen so they can keep buying politicians to get their special privileges.

They always inevitably end up being given special privileges.

Because, contrary to what we would all like to believe, once a company becomes large we don't want them to go under, even if they're not optimal.

There's a huge amount of jobs, institutional knowledge, processes, capital, etc in these big monopolies. Like if Boeing just went under today, how long would it take for another company to re-figure out how to make airplanes? I mean, take a look at NASA. We went to the moon, but can we do it again? It would be very difficult. Because so many engineers retired and IP was allowed to just... rot.

It's a balancing act. Obviously we want to keep the market as free as possible and yadda yadda invisible hand. But we also have national security to consider, and practicality.

> Throughout history there are very few monopolies and they don't normally last that long

That's completely incorrect. Historically, monopolies were pretty long-lived. So much that they were often written into the legal codes.

It's only fairly recently that the pace of innovation picked up so much, that monopolies not really die per se, but just become irrelevant.