Micro Economics and the Effects of Monopolies

More than anything else, the progress of the world in the 21^st Century depends on economics. It affects everything and everyone, whether natives in darkest Africa, striving to avoid encroaching urbanization, to the middle aged managers, now out of work in America because of downsizing. Microeconomics is a far more personal aspect of the world economy in general. What we earn, what we spend, what we save, how diligently we work and retain our jobs is all part of the microeconomic system that controls our daily lives.

Because of the wide range of subjects, the following pages are more a generalized overview, with some specifics included. It is almost a primer of how we deal with the microeconomic status under which we live and the ever-escalating goal of "bigness" in manufacture, globalization, retailing and even in the service industries. To begin, one should take apart the idea that we are now the slaves of computers.

The new high-tech age, a.k.a. as The Computer Age, is not a new Industrial Revolution. It is merely an expansion of it. It is, in a way, similar to the coming of jet airplanes to make journeys faster. While there has been much promise that the computer will spark an entirely new and improved economic system, there is little proof that this is happening. We are in an age where each day new "dot.com" companies are being formed, making instant millionaires out of ordinary computer nerds (and seeing many of them lose all those millions when the companies fail to perform or even earn a fair profit).

Rather than think of this new high-tech infusion in the world's economic institutions, one should consider this the age of a new type of entrepreneur. As Thorstein Veblen wrote: "The material framework of modern civilization is the industrial system, and the directing force which animates this framework is business enterprise." (Veblen 1) Business enterprise, as we enter the 21^st century is nothing more than creating an acceptable combination of product or service availability matched to consumer needs.