&gt; A &quot;naturally&quot; regulated market eventually converges into one all-powerful monopoly player - it&#x27;s a stable configuration that maximizes the profit for the owners of that monopoly.<p>This is unsupported by any serious literature. Economic theory tells us that the only circumstance in which this happens is an industry prone to natural monopoly, which are generally those constrained by geography and enormous fixed infrastructure costs coupled with relatively constant marginal costs.<p>The &quot;natural&quot; long-run state of free markets is economic equilibrium, which necessarily includes competition to reduce marginal profits to around zero at the point that the amount supplied is equal to the amount demanded.