This One Company controls America’s ENTIRE Health Care System, or why you're DENIED your health care claim.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=frr4wuvAB6U&feature=share

#BIGPharma #UnitedHealthCare #HealthCare #HealthInsurance #Monopolies #MonopoliesAreNetworks

@pluralistic I'm all but convinced that every case of a "natural monopoly" can be tied to a network structure, either physical or conceptual.

More to the point, a network with either a central node or a least-cost path which is controllec by a specific entity.

Physical networks are transport (ground, rail, canals, sea, air), commerce, distribution (water, sewerage grid power, gas and oil pipelines, flight networks, shipping routes). Real estate (literally, control over nodes in a landscape). Extractive natural resources (control over high-yield nodes).

Virtual ones are relational, but also follow the same general structure: nodes, links, flows (or relations), and control points. Wholesale and retail distribution networks. Business contracts. Communications networks. Knowledge itself, which can be conceived of as a web. Education systems (access to and certification in knowledge or skill). Business conglomerates or chaebol are relational networks of control and distribution. Labour unions or guilds create a gateway around labour or skills resources. Patents and copyrights are government-instituted gateways, which through networks of owned properties and/or ownership give monopoly power.

Network structures create monopolies, monopolies are networks.

(I'm still looking for exceptions, I've not found any yet.)

Public ownership or control of the controlling node or least-cost path seems to be one of the few countermeasures.

#networks #monopoly #MonopoliesAreNetworks