Fertile Ground
When we mistake abundance for benevolence, we enter into a shadow bargain with power. Today's effortless conveniences—our maps, our search results, our cloud treasuries of memories—are not gifts, but the spoils of conquest. A monopolist perfects the paradox of kindness: offering "free" services whilst extracting value from elsewhere in the ecosystem, creating an illusion of generosity that masks the true exchange.
The most dangerous monopolies are not those that extract maximum profit today, but those that strategically underprice to secure tomorrow's dominance. They sacrifice the immediate feast to claim the perpetual harvest. When competition dies, so too dies the pressure to create what humans truly need rather than what serves the monopolist's goals.
We fail to see this exchange for what it is—a transaction where the price is not displayed, but embedded in attention captured, choices narrowed, and alternatives starved of oxygen. The true cost manifests in the innovations never born, the creators who withdrew from fields deemed "kill zones," the parallel futures that withered before they could blossom.
A healthy market requires not just current abundance, but the creative destruction that ensures future abundance. The ultimate resource is not the output of today's giants, but the limitless potential of those who might replace them tomorrow.