There is a particular kind of hypocrisy that only governments can embody, and it is nowhere more glaring than in their crusades against corporate monopolies. The state positions itself as the defender of competition, the watchdog against concentration of power, the champion of consumer choice. But the truth is brutally obvious: governments themselves are the most absolute monopolies in existence.
Monopoly by Fiat
A company that grows too large is accused of anti-competitive behavior. It is fined, split apart, or shackled with regulatory chains. Yet a government claims, without irony, a monopoly on taxation, a monopoly on lawmaking, a monopoly on policing, a monopoly on violence. These monopolies are not conditional on consumer preference. You cannot choose a rival supplier of courts, prisons, or armies. The competition is exile, prison, or death.
A firm like Google, dominant in search, can be displaced if users find a better alternative. A currency like Bitcoin can be chosen freely over fiat. But try offering a rival set of laws in Washington or Ottawa and watch how swiftly the state reminds you of its monopoly on force. Business monopolies are fragile because they depend on consent. State monopolies are entrenched precisely because they do not.
The Mask of Consumer Protection
When governments prosecute monopolies, they pretend it is about protecting consumers. They warn about higher prices, reduced innovation, lower quality of service. But look more closely. Who sets mandatory price floors, bans entire categories of innovation, and regulates quality by fiat? Who inflates the currency, ensuring that prices creep ever higher, not because of market dynamics but because of deliberate policy? The state wears the mask of consumer protection, but its true motive is transparent: it cannot abide a rival center of power.
Voluntary vs. Coercive Monopolies
The essential difference is this: corporate monopolies are voluntary, government monopolies are coercive. You can stop using Facebook. You can delete Amazon from your phone. You cannot stop paying taxes without facing threats backed by guns. The state’s monopoly is total, territorial, and non-consensual.
Governments accuse corporations of being too powerful, but their real objection is to competition in the realm of domination. A private firm with billions in capital and millions of customers begins to look like a proto-state: a structure that can rival the government’s ability to coordinate, to persuade, to surveil. Antitrust is not protection of the consumer—it is protection of the state monopoly itself.
The Empire in Disguise
The greatest trick the monopolist ever pulled was convincing the public that it was their liberator. We are told to fear Standard Oil, but not the IRS. To rage against Meta, but not the NSA. To view Microsoft’s bundling of a browser as more sinister than the government’s bundling of law and violence. This inversion of moral perspective is not an accident—it is propaganda. The monopolist wears the robes of the regulator.
Breaking the Spell
The state warns us to beware of monopolies while wielding the most complete monopoly of all. This is not irony—it is inversion. The monopolist accuses others of its own crimes, and the people, lulled by propaganda, applaud their captor as their savior.