The Individual, Monopoly or The Whole

Protection against this general monopoly is as difficult as protection against pollution.

People will face a danger that threatens their own self-interest but not one that threatens society as a whole.

Many more people are against cars than are against driving them. They are against cars because they pollute and because they monopolize traffic. They drive cars because they consider the pollution created by one car insignificant, and because they do not feel personally deprived of freedom when they drive.

It is also difficult to be protected against monopoly when a society is already littered with roads, schools, or hospitals, when independent action has been paralyzed for so long that the ability for it seems to have atrophied, and when simple alternatives seem beyond the reach of the imagination.

Monopoly is hard to get rid of when it has frozen not only the shape of the physical world but also the range of behavior and of imagination.

Radical monopoly is generally discovered only when it is too late.