Well the Tim Wu book will give some pretty good examples of the good/bad/ugly of Monopolies in the short term and long term. I think the biggest problem is when the monopoly/oligopoly is over something that yields power over everyone (money, communications, water, oil, information,.....). Putting that kind of power in a few hands almost always yields exploitation.
I think the hope is blockchain technology will remove the ability for large monopolies to have control over the users of their product. Nobody would be able to manipulate the money supply, internet access, dns records.... In crypto we worry about a 51% attack, which is a real concern, but in monopolies we worry about a .000001% attack.
I hope we are going to see monopolies in the tech world start to dissipate. If you haven't notices silicon valley loves monopolies and oligopolies, a lot of people seem to gloss over that fact. However blockchain tech, coupled with modern API's and machine to machine communications we are seeing smaller pieces of software being built. Other dev's combine those smaller software tools and combine them to make systems that businesses use. If one of those smaller pieces of software isn't playing nice developers can remove that one piece and swap it out. There used to be a huge switching cost when moving from one software system to another. Now you can just make a modification to it, use a different tool or API and keep running. No need to spend tons of money switching software systems, training all your employees, migrating data. Blockchains are similar. If someone were to somehow take over a blockchain people could fork that chain and make changes that would foil the takeover with relatively little disturbance.
That said, just about every business around is trying to figure out a way to make their company a monopoly. Who knows what the future holds.
