What Business Practice Contributed Most to Andrew Carnegie’s Ability to Form a Monopoly

What business practice contributed most to Andrew Carnegie’s ability to form a monopoly?

That is an interesting question and yet perhaps we do not know. The answer is very difficult to determine because it varies from one person to another. Yet there are certain practices that seem to apply consistently to the person who would like to establish a monopoly in any field.

• First, they seem to operate on a level playing field with other people. In other words, there is no such thing as being too rich or too poor. Everyone has the potential to be rich and everyone has the potential to be poor. Carnegie, as you probably know, was no exception. In his day, he had no problems being richer than most people in his field.
• Second, the practice of acquiring new customers is a critical feature of all Monopoly games. You establish yourself as the monopoly owner and you have to aggressively pursue new customers to keep your customers happy and to increase your market share. Again, this is a feedback process. The more your customers tell you they are happy, the more you need to stay aggressive in pursuing them.
• Finally, in addition to the acquisition of new customers, the player who establishes the monopoly also exercises a tremendous amount of power over the company he has just created. The first effect of this is that the owner of the monopoly is able to manipulate prices and product mix in order to maximize profits. In a pure economic environment, the consumer is not in charge of pricing. Yet the monopoly owner often controls where products come from, what they taste like and even how long they last. This allows him to manipulate the consumers as well as the marketplace.

The final area in which Thebes had an influence on Andrew Carnegie’s ability to form a monopoly was his idea of automation. Modern-day robots and other artificial intelligence allow us to do many things for ourselves that were unthinkable even ten years ago. When we can do these jobs by remote control, we free up time from a hectic lifestyle and have the opportunity to pursue a more meaningful type of career. As important as it was for Andrew Carnegie to establish a profitable business, he also wanted his innovations to be empowering rather than merely replicate the work of others. He saw the possibility of creating a completely new industry by developing and manufacturing automated tools that were both safe and profitable.

Although there are many examples of innovative business practices, nothing has been matched yet by Thebes. In fact, when you read over the history of business and the development of new industries, it becomes clear that Thebes contributed far more to business practices than any other city in the world. Today, many areas of the economy are based on ideas and inventions that arose from Thebes. It is little wonder then that the city is still eager to share its long-term innovations with the rest of the world.