&gt; OTOH, the central feature of both real-world capitalism and the more utopian &quot;free market&quot; idealized form is government establishment and protection of property rights, which are precisely government-granted monopolies.<p>That&#x27;s just equivocating two meanings of the same word though. A title to real estate is a &quot;monopoly&quot; over a piece of land, but it isn&#x27;t inherently a &quot;monopoly&quot; in the sense that you have no competitors. If you own an apartment building but someone else owns a similar one across the street from you, you have competition. You don&#x27;t own <i>every</i> apartment building. And it&#x27;s only in the second sense that a monopoly would be problematic.