The men who built America episode 8 (2012) is a collection of events that shaped the American economy in the early 1900s. It all starts with the assassination of President William Mckinley by a fed-up worker named Leon Czolgosz. President Mckinley was a strong proponent of monopolies and used his position to support him. His successor president teddy Roosevelt was antitrust and started implementing policies to break up monopolies made by people like JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Over the course of the next several years, American courts ordered the monopolies to break up their stranglehold on the market. This paved the way for a new generation of American entrepreneurs to implement their innovations. One of the entrepreneurs to capitalize on the anti-monopoly ban wagon was Hennery Ford. Henry Ford was a young entrepreneur who was trying to implement his idea for an affordable car that the average American citizen could purchase. At the time the ALAN group had held the patient to the car and all production had to be approved by them. Henry Ford disagreed with this sentiment and produced his car anyways. When they took him to court they ruled in his favor and he was allowed to produce his car. this anti-monopoly sentiment allowed for smaller businesses to rise and develop something that was not seen in history, A middle class. As the big tycoons started to progress far into their old age they developed a sense of altruism and became big Philanthropists. Billions of dollars were given to fund public libraries and schools across the nation.
Entrepreneurship is a powerful tool in society. The ability to create value for fellow people is a beautiful thing. But when does start to have an adverse effect on society? Monopolies exist when there is no competitor in the market and the industry starts to integrate all facets of the industry into a sole business. This sounds good on paper but without competition in the market, innovation can stagnate. Smartphones are a good example of this. Every year they release some minuscule feature on the phone or take away a feature so that consumers have to make additional purchases to fully utilize their product. The removal of the headphone jack was a big feature that was taken away. They did not remove the headphone jack because they didn't have room. They had plenty of room, the S22 ultra can fit a whole pen inside of it let alone a headphone jack. They do this so you have to purchase more expensive wireless earbuds or an adaptor for your wired earbuds. Consumers do not like this aspect of business because it is predatory in nature but have to play into it the businesses have an immense foothold on the market. With the total addressable market being so large it makes the market only addressable to the big industries that inhabit it leading to fewer innovations due to startups not being able to exit the valley of death. This is an unfortunate aspect of entrepreneurship but it still allows products with great potential that is incorporated into the market well to breach the market and escape the valley of death.
