Evaluate whether growing market concentration and monopoly power is necessarily undesirable.

Discussion of monopolies should be based around the motivations of monopolies and whether such desires of those elites in the industry in question benefit or degrade society as a whole. 

A monopoly may be see as a bad thing for society as a whole because the price of goods may be artificially kept above equilibrium price in order that the firm may take extra profits. This is possible because in a monopolistic market the firm is a price setter not a price taker because there exist no viable alternatives for consumers. For example, if a monopolist exists for apartments where every apartment in an area is owned by the same firm, the firm is able to set any price it wants, and if consumers want to live there, they will just have to deal with and cooperate with the price set. 

However, monopolies are not always a bad thing. The presence of monopolies in todays societies allows for technological advancement. Without laws such as patents and copyright which allows the makers of a product monopoly over its design for a certain number of years, inverstment and research would never be carried out by firms. There would be no point investing millions of dollars into researching a cure for cancer for the self-interested capitalist is there was no scope for profits. Patents allow firms to monopolise a certain industry in order to recuperate a certain amount of the invested costs of research. Thus, monopolies can actually be desireable because they allow for technological advancement which makes our lives easier.