Monopoly is Power

Monopoly is ability to provide something essential that nobody else can provide. Power is ability to control. If you have acquire certain resources that people depends on, then you can manipulate the people by making them accepting your conditions. The resources you have acquired must be both essential and un-substitutable.

At a distance, bowmen have power on swordsmen because bowmen have ability to hit. Governments work on monopoly by making it illegal for masses to do certain things like having a private army, issuing currency,  having independent foreign policy or provide justice. Managers have power on workers because only managers can write the periodic performance-evaluation reports on which salary, promotion etc of workers depends. If some non-government agency such as local committees start providing justice or independent security firms starts providing security etc then government loses control. If directors interfere by starting consulting workers directly then managers lose power.

Power comes by being in minority. Majority never have power because majority never have monopoly. Its always a selected few that control the essential resources. This is why democracies are essentially broken. Masses never have power because they are replaceable. Its the few talented ones that controls. Their talent can be in giving speeches, in administration, in gaining sympathies, in winning wars, in making economic systems more efficient etc but its some talent to the extreme that nobody else in country have.

Battles are won by acquiring some unique position like higher ground. If there are multiple equivalent higher grounds then nobody wins. Skirmishes are won by acquiring the unique position where you can hit and the enemy is unable to hit, like in aircraft dog fights at the tail of the enemy aircraft.

Communist Revolution was successful by taking control of military which is an essential resource. Taking control of masses is never enough because masses are not essential resource and therefore can easily be replaced. This is why uprising of 1906 failed.

Mughals ruled in india by having hundreds of replaceable amirs therefore preventing power going in the hands of amirs. Occasionally amirs do get some power when at the death of a king multiple princes fight for the throne. Princes in such situations are multiple, therefore replaceable. This is the same principle by which leaders have power. A leader have to have some unique and essential ability that none of the sub-ordinates have. If leader has no such ability then there is no value addition and soon people seek somebody else.

Globalization breaks monopolies because although certain entities can have local monopolies almost no entity has global monopoly. It means that although in a small region certain company or individual has some unique ability its very hard to have that uniqueness globally.

Monopoly in skills comes in two dimensions: intensity and extensity. While its essential to acquire deep working knowledge of a certain field its also helpful to have knowledge of multiple fields. Since knowledge is easy to get at start and get tougher as one goes deeper (the 80 20 rule) its more efficient to have middle level knowledge of many things than to have very deep knowledge of a few things. This is not a suggestion against speciality. Speciality is needed but usually only middle level. A few deep experts in entire planet in each useful field is enough. For all others its ok to stop at middle level expertise and move on to some other field. The monopoly would then come by the combinations.

Caesar had the unique combination of winning wars, gaining masses' hearts by spreading wealth and managing budget all at the same time. Mark Anthony could win both wars and hearts but was never good in balancing budgets. Octavius was expert in maintaining budget only. Its like when a leader dies, the replacing generals each have some of the qualities of the leader but none has the combination. Also none of the replacing generals reach same level of expertise in any of the subset of qualities.

Out of the 4 wheels of a car none has monopoly because the work done by any of the wheels can be done to some level by the 2 adjacent wheels. Same goes for walls in a room. This do not hold for a tent in which the center pillar is on which the other 4 rest, so the center pillar has monopoly.

All contracts are means of getting monopoly. For example the job contract limits employments rights of the worker, the nationality contract limits loyalty rights of citizens etc.

Governments work by enforcing monopolies on masses but themselves avoid monopolies by having multiple agencies doing the same work. Examples include military, border guards, rangers doing the same essential function, multiple spy agencies doing the same essential function, multiple levels of judiciary doing the same essential function etc. Even inside a government agency multiple workers are present for same job in order to break monopoly. Monopolies in essence are never efficient but are very effective. Private companies while gaining efficiency over-depend on a few critical workers whose exit can easily bring the entire company at its knees.

Ability to take war to another dimension where enemy cannot go is monopoly. For example if one army is entirely ground-base and another army is both ground-based and air-based then the chances of winning of second army are very high. Same goes for the first nation that takes war to space which for all practical purposes is another dimension entirely.

Essence of winning wars is to hit the enemy where it cannot strike back. This is why guerilla wars are usually won by the militias and very seldom by the regular armies. If the enemy cannot hit back entirely, that is there is one hundred percent guarantee that enemy cannot strike back in that particular field then chances are very high that the enemy would simply surrender. Such is the case of japan surrendering after the nuclear attacks.