this is just a weird post because you're assuming this is something that's inherent to capitalism and free market. Let me provide a counter example of this,
I grew up in India where socialist and welfare society concept is baked into our constitution. Most corporations were government owned prior to 1992, most manufacturing was done in India for our market and almost every public service was subsidized.
you know what that led to? incredible amount of corruption in every branch of government and services (as they were part of government). red tapism was rampant and opening a new business was a nightmare. some of our biggest co ops( Amul as an example) needed constant help for it to survive and make profit.
We were in such a bad position that we were months away from bankruptcy in 1992 when economic liberalisation happened. 
Do you really think people were thriving under our socialist policies when everything was government and consequently, everything was shit?
there's a reason people who lived under socialism tell you why it was absolutely dogshit and somehow, western liberals still can't hear a word. our ethos of hard work are partly because of the shit we have seen under socialist systems and we do everything to escape that.
Our education was dogshit both k-12 and colleges, we had only 2 government channels and hence had limited source of entertainment. If you're talking of monopolies, there was no bigger monopoly than the government.