saltmummy626 wrote:[...]as I was taught, a "monopoly" was a company that would buy up all the other related companies, material suppliers, and such rendering yourself completely independent from any outside company and leaving very little left over for other competing companies.
For the record, per von Mises' definition, a monopoly is where a seller can restrict the amount of sales (that is, restricting the supply) of some goods and, by doing so, have the prices of those goods increase to a greater degree than that to which he restricts sales, therefore earning greater sums than he would have if he would not have restricted sales.
Normally, on a free market, the prices of goods would not increase by a seller restricting his sales, because doing so would either allow another seller to sell more of the same goods, or allow a new supplier to enter the market, preventing the supply as a whole from being restricted or, at least, diminish its restriction. The common way by which such a monopoly arises is, of course, by restricting the market by forbidding, per government decree, anyone but a single or a closed set of sellers from supplying those kinds of goods (cf. e.g. alcohol in Sweden :P). There are other ways it can arise, too, however (though they are exceedingly rare in practice).