500 Corporations control over 53% of all the world's combined GNP. Certain sectors of the economy have been turned into complete monopolies, the most notorious being the energy market. most notoriously, the western Energy Cartels have nationally taken control of the means of production of energy and in most countries (such as Germany) even the infrastructure so that the national population and working class is has no possibility of buying from foreign companies that would charge less. These monopolies then, being in control of such economic (and political) power, produce artificially less to drive up market demand hence raise the price for their product and in turn speculate on a "possible" rise in prices of energy of their product... making themselves and everyone involved in the money making scheme rich, and the consumers to pay the bill, if they can that is. Over 1/8 households in Germany have had their electricity turned off because they could not afford to pay it. In the last two decades, energy prices have constantly increased. The costs of the production of Atomic Energy in Germany (with age old technology by the cheap, money grabbing capitalists) are at 10€ per mw/s (megawatt per hour) while the market price for energy is 55€ per megawatt per hour. Coal energy production costs are 15€ per mw/s while the EEX energy market price is 55€ pro mw/s. Food Prices can be manipulated by monopoly capitalists through artificially suppressing production and thus driving up market demand as well, but the agricultural industry is not that monopolised that they could get away with those kind of numbers. Food Prices get most of their fluctuation (all of the relevant one that you would ever read about, such as this one about the "Food Riots" in Algeria... ha!) from speculation in the global market on certain companies' production trends. So the Food Riots that happened in 2008 were a result of a teeny tiny dip in Corn and Wheat production but which was speculated, and speculated, and speculated on to exponential limits which (once those bets were lost had to be compensated... by the poor) raised the price of winter wheat and Corn over 450% of its production costs! Here the problem of monopolization is a bit opaque because you have all this speculation, but which is actually profitable to agricultural which is always running out of markets to sell its necessary increasing products to. Certainly Monsanto owns a huge portion of the global agricultural industry or goes through court trials to force farmers to give a portion of their production to them because they happened to use Monsanto patented, genetically manipulated seeds. We live in a highly monopolized capitalist system in which the markets can be manipulated by certain companies who own a monopoly over certain commodities and can (by means of them and other markets speculating on these production changes) attain enormous profits and keep up its necessary growth. All this power of the few owners of monopolies most certainly is not just used for mere profiteering, it gives them significant economic/political power. In February of 2011 the food prices of winter wheat went up 250% of its of its production cost price. The number one importer of Winter Wheat is Egypt, and there were immediate protests labelled as "Freedom" or "Revolutionary" protests (honestly it is my opinion that US/western capital had a feud with Mubarak, at least it seems happy with the massive and cheap privatisation program of the nice new military junta regime...). So i assume that monopoly Capitalists are aware of this, there is as Marx points out in "Capital", a historical tradition of capitalists manipulating prices to hurt or (historically more frequent to nationally, domestically) illus the working class.
The monopolization of industry is the most threatening feature of capitalism today. Decline, or full-out elimination of competition in the price market enables the capitalists to charge grossly more than what is necessary for even a substantial profit, and the result is the further impoverishment of working people. For purposes of clarification, when referring to artificial suppression of production within the energy and agricultural industries, are you citing less consumer options (which is the result of monopilization) for the working class? Is this how they artificially reduce production, through the existence of less productive outputs?
Since the various energy monopolies in germany amount to 4 single companies, they form syndicates and agree on producing less energy than demanded on the consumer market, thus forcing up a bidding up of prices in the energy market; a sort of artificial inflation that they get rich off of on the backs of consumers and at the cost of the poor who are increasingly unable to pay the rising energy costs. Parasites!
