What a public backlash reveals about monopoly power.
Spring school picture day arrives with predictable rituals—the combing of hair, the practicing of smiles, and the filling out of order forms that get crumpled up in backpacks. This year, it brings something else: scrutiny. America’s largest school photography company, Lifetouch, has landed in the headlines this month after newly surfaced Epstein-related ownership-chain disclosures triggered parental anger. The facts remain contested, but the reaction is revealing. For many families, the controversy isn’t just about one vendor. It’s about the uneasy feeling that they never had a choice to begin with. Regardless of order form submission, pictures are typically taken anyway.
In fact, if you want to understand how Americans experience “monopoly power,” look to the school pickup line instead of throwing scorn at big business. Parents know what it feels like to operate inside a captive market. When it comes to school photos via Lifetouch, book orders through Scholastic, yearbooks printed by Jostens, or reading incentives like Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program, families typically take what the school contracts provide. There is no aisle to compare alternatives. No bidding war for better prices. Such arrangements are often labeled “monopolies.” But that word deserves more precision.
A monopoly, properly understood, is not simply a firm with brand-name dominance or significant market share. A monopoly occurs only when competitive entry is blocked—when force or regulation prevents alternatives from emerging. Indeed, limited choice alone does not constitute monopoly power if competitors are free to enter and consumers are free to switch. As such, in a market-based economy, dominance signals performance and preference, not coercion.
Consider the back-to-school supply list. Crayola crayons, Elmer’s glue, and Expo markers have become default selections. Add Lunchables and Uncrustables to the lunchbox, and convenience pays for itself. These brands appear to “stand alone,” yet their position is not protected by force. It is protected by trust, habit, and reliability. Consumer behavior and market mechanisms are more effective and efficient when it comes to curtailing bad business behavior, as compared to the role regulators try to play.
Truly, in competitive markets, brand equity is earned daily. If quality slips or prices rise too much, substitutes emerge, and new product offerings follow. Additionally, it is worth noting that even when consumer-facing brands appear concentrated, competition can be fierce upstream. Behind every crayon or glue stick lies a complex web of suppliers competing for contracts. Economists call this derived demand: final products stimulate competition among intermediate producers.
While school supply shoppers may see one crayon brand on the shelf, dozens of firms may be competing to supply pigments, waxes, and packaging. Supposed monopolies at the retail level often mask vigorous rivalry within supply chains.
Sometimes, limited competition in the marketplace also stems from simple economics rather than exclusion. Consumers are creatures of habit, and switching carries risk—financial, social, or practical. Economist Milton Friedman once described certain industries as “technical monopolies,” where infrastructure or coordination costs naturally limit the number of providers. A single school-photo vendor isn’t always a conspiracy; sometimes, it is simply administratively convenient.
This is why the current Lifetouch backlash matters. The company’s scale didn’t shield it from reputational pressure—it amplified it. And parents who once accepted school-photo contracts without a second thought are now asking harder questions about vendor oversight, data stewardship, and the digital records of children that Lifetouch maintains.
Of course, one company’s controversy shouldn’t become a blanket indictment of an entire industry. When misconduct surfaced at Wells Fargo, it didn’t erase the credibility of every consumer bank, nor did problems at Boeing lead travelers to abandon aviation altogether. Scrutiny should be precise, not indiscriminate—and the same principle applies to school vendors today.
But the monopoly debate becomes sharper when we step back and examine the structure of public education itself. Pandemic-era school closures exposed how little leverage families sometimes have when institutional decisions don’t align with their needs. And when consumers cannot redirect their spending, dissatisfaction inevitably turns political.
Many parents explored private schooling, homeschooling, or policy reforms to expand school choice—not due to ideology, but necessity. That is the deeper lesson behind the current controversy. Parents are not reacting solely to headlines; they are responding to the realization that their bargaining power is constrained by institutional design.
In markets where exchange is voluntary, providers must continually justify their value through performance, price, and trust. When purchasing decisions are mediated through centralized contracts and tax-funded systems, accountability becomes more abstract and the lines of responsibility less clear—and this is a concern when it comes to American children.
Monopoly, properly understood, is not about big brand names or market share. It is about the structure of choice itself—who decides, who pays, and who bears the consequences.
Parents navigating school purchases each year may not speak in the language of antitrust theory, yet their daily decisions reveal a simple truth: competition is ultimately measured not by how many firms exist, but by whether buyers retain the freedom to choose differently when it matters most.
