Technology is making their monopoly even less natural. In the old days, the most efficient way to make electricity was with a big central plant. The bigger the plant, the cheaper the juice. But now, the same jet turbine technology that lets airliners fly across oceans with fuel to spare has created the microturbine, a jet engine hooked to a generator that can make electricity for about half the price of the big old plants. Answer, the aircraft makers have to compete.
History gives a conclusive answer.
In every case, the big guys lost out, while the little startups, and the little individual consumers, benefited. After ten years, prices in these five industries were at least 25 percent lower, and sometimes close to 50 percent lower. Regarding the electric monopoly, both liberal and conservative think tanks are predicting that energy prices will fall after deregulation. Even the Department of Energy is predicting that energy prices will fall, so we have predations from left, right and center. A separate university study predicted that Colorado electricity prices would decline 26 percent after deregulation.