> Is it always unethical to buy something supplied by a monopoly?

Never, it's just unethical to operate one.

> Is convenience an ethical good

I feel like this could only be true if your life was in actual danger when lacking that convenience. This is possibly the wrong question anyways, I'd ask if the externalized costs of that convenience are small enough to justify the imputed good of the service.

Which is why we can tolerate natural monopolies where collective safety is involved, such as electrical distribution, but shouldn't where it isn't, such as video game distribution.

> especially convenience delivered on a mass scale?

What special ethical properties does this provide?

> Never, it's just unethical to operate one.

Is it? If you simply have no competition, you're running a monopoly. That doesn't seem like an unethical situation.

That seems like frictionless spherical cows. Having a monopoly might happen for a very short time by being first, keeping one....

The issue isn't having a monopoly (which Steam doesn't) but rather doing anti-competitive things to maintain the monopoly.

Having a good product that people want and prefer to buy isn't anti-competitive. Establishing exclusive contracts with publishers and preventing something from being sold somewhere else for less is anti-competitive.

I don't find it reasonable to claim that Steam is a monopoly in the PC gaming space (there might be an argument for it if one were to try to limit it to "games distribution platforms that run on Linux"). And even assuming that they did have a monopoly, they aren't using anti-competitive techniques to maintain it.

Correct and nobody claimed that.

There is a statement further up in the comment tree that states ".. it's just unethical to operate [a monopoly]."

I'm trying to clarify that it's not unethical to have a monopoly, nor even maintain one - it is only unethical to maintain one in ways that are anticompetitive (and making the best product isn't anticompetitive).

Convenience is an ethical good because it saves either time, energy, or thought, all of which are limited resources.

If a monopoly makes something more convenient for hundreds of millions of people, think of the species-wide savings.

Add up all conveniences, and you get real progress. For instance, many women in Africa are in charge of providing water and clean laundry for their households - not agreeing, just stating the facts. These two things are almost a full-time job if done by hand.

If things ever progressed to the point where African countries have mass-scale running water and washing machines, think of how hundreds of millions of adults suddenly have time and energy to do something else.

Now that's an extreme example, but the point stands. Making things convenient for others requires hard work upfront building systems and is to be encouraged.