The free market naturally leads to concentration of power in the hands of corporations  Many global markets are dominated by a few big firms: look, for example, to the markets in fast food, dominated by McDonald’s, or the market for drilling and selling oil, dominated by Exxon, Shell and BP. This concentration of market power is natural outcome of free markets, this is because of economies of scale – a production line can produce each individual unit faster and more cheaply than if products were made individually. Also partly because the transaction costs of markets are too high (i.e. the costs of negotiating, monitoring and managing all the exchange relations necessary for production and distribution of the good or service involved), corporations have an incentive to structurally organize themselves into large firms (The Nature of the Firm, 1937). This also creates barriers to entry; while an individual may be able to manufacture an individual unit it is much more difficult to set up a whole factory from scratch in order to compete, there is then little possibility of competitors entering the market as a result of price rises.  Being so large gives them an unfair advantage towards both their suppliers and their consumers. Large firms can collude to form oligopolies. This generates more profit for the firms involved, but raises prices above the market clearing price for consumers as the firms agree not to undercut each other, this may also be informal simply raising prices by reducing the amount of choice or supply.  Vis-à-vis their suppliers, these firms gain an equally unfair bargaining advantage. A prime example is the market for (low skilled) labour: with a surplus of (low skilled) labour, each individual worker either has to accept a very low wage or be replaced by someone who does want to work for that low wage. This unequal bargaining power keeps the price for labour very low, so low that workers have no surplus budget to invest in themselves to be able gain skills, negotiate better jobs and thereby lift themselves out of poverty.