imported. The South, wanting to secede from the Union, hoped to leverage Britain’s high dependency on its cotton

into formal diplomatic recognition of the Confederate States of America.

This leads us to this chapter's topic: a firm that controls all (or nearly all) of the supply of a good or service—a

monopoly. How do monopoly firms behave in the marketplace? Do they have “power?” Does this power potentially

have unintended consequences? We’ll return to this case at the end of the chapter to see how the tea and cotton

monopolies influenced U.S. history.

Many believe that top executives at firms are the strongest supporters of market competition, but this belief is

far from the truth. Think about it this way: If you very much wanted to win an Olympic gold medal, would you

rather be far better than everyone else, or locked in competition with many athletes just as good as you?
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