There's a good reason why we have laws against monopolies. When corporations get big enough to crush all competition, capitalism turns into oligarchy.

But is it necessarily different when there are two dominant players?

Consider Coke and Pepsi, Apple and Samsung, Airbus and Boeing. Are these giants really in competition with one another, or do they simply go through the motions in a symbiotic dance while blocking third-party competitors from getting a significant piece of the action?

And, speaking of third parties, what about the Republicans and the Democrats? Together, they hold the political process in a death grip so firm that outsiders and independents have almost no hope of mounting a serious challenge. In fact, given the near-extinction of political moderates, it's arguable that entrenched leadership among both donkeys and elephants is less interested in winning particular elections than in maintaining control over their respective constituencies.

So what do you call it when not one, but two entities claim an unfair advantage to exclude all contenders? Not a monopoly, but this week's addition to the Ethical Lexicon:

Duopoly (du*op*o*ly/ doo-op-uh-lee) noun

A situation in which a commodity or service is controlled by only two producers or suppliers.

In a particularly compelling episode of Freakonomics Radio, host Stephen Dubner gathered thinkers and scholars to outline how the illusion of competition actually bolsters the consolidation of power and dominance. By relentlessly vilifying the opposition, each camp fuels tribalization by inflaming fanatical and passionate loyalty among its own power base.

What's more, news networks can't resist covering brazen exaggeration and disregard for facts. But the effect is not condemnation; it's free advertising. Because in the end, most of us default to one party or the other, convinced that we have no choice but the lesser of two evils.

Writing for National Review, Andrew McCarthy perfectly summed up the reversal of 42 congressional seats in last week's elections:

Yes, the Democrats are still lunatics. But don't worry; by mid-January everyone will remember why, even after his 2020 attempted soft coup, Trump managed to beat them four years later. In the meantime, though, Trump became the frighteningly crazy guy who made the sidelined Democrats seem comparatively stable.

As ever, history repeats itself. In 1994, Republicans flipped 54 seats to win the House for the first time in 40 years. In 2006, Democrats flipped 31 seats to take it back. In 2010, voters broke with former President Barack Obama and flipped 63 seats to give Republicans the House once again.

Herein lies the insidious danger of duopoly: It lulls us into the comforting fantasy that we are exercising free choice, when in fact we're mired in a deceptive dichotomy between distinctions without any meaningful difference.

There is an obvious solution: The United States needs a third party.

We came close a few times in the last century. Former President Theodore Roosevelt garnered 88 electoral votes as the Bull Moose candidate in 1912, and Strom Thurmond won 39 electoral votes for the Dixiecrats in 1948. Ross Perot would likely have won the presidency in 1992 had he not dropped out mid-campaign before deciding to jump back in again. He still got 19% of the popular vote.

Since then, however, the establishment parties have successfully convinced their constituents that any third-party vote is a vote for the opposition. But so what? This is one case where moderate voters should heed President Donald Trump's call, when he asked in 2016, "What do you have to lose?"

The human brain is naturally lazy. It persuades us to indulge in false comparisons rather than accurately assessing objective value. If we find candidate A detestable, we subconsciously embrace the opposition, even if candidate B is only a smidgen less malignant. We close our eyes to hide from the ethical mandate that summons us to reject both alternatives when neither offers a viable option.

When faced with a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the only right decision is to look for someone or something better. By recognizing that false binary and uprooting the duopoly of our own thinking, we open ourselves to the possibility of a better third way that can free us from the tyranny of the status quo.

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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