They seem to assume there is only one means to an end, a business only succeeds if it benefits the consumers. While that is indeed one way it is not the only way, especially when it comes to large corporations. Most of those people are only concerned with making monkey, they don’t care about the business, the customers, the employees. They only care when they’re forced to, or if it’s impacting their ability to make money.

The two act as if there was no problem in which the anti-trust acts were a response to. As if the government crafted a law to combat a non-existent problem. I don’t know that the US government has ever been proactive, over-reactive yes, but proactive I don’t think so.

I’m not suggesting the US anti-trust and regulatory laws are necessarily the greatest or even close to that or that they’re always enforced appropriately, but RP and Professor guy there take the position ‘hey this isn’t working as well as it could therefore we shouldn’t have any at all’. I think that’s some fallacious rational there. It’s like climbing a steep mountain, seeing the rope you’re using is frayed, and cutting your line because it’s dangerous.

It’s funny they talk about how the current (Regan) administration is doing good by deregulating some industries. Like the savings & loan industry which promptly decided it was time to start making a ton of high risk loans and started tossing the hot potato around until someone finally dropped it. History repeats, isn’t that what’s been happening right now? Make a bunch of bad loans sell them off to someone else, lather rinse repeat, someone gets stuck with the bad loans, they get screwed, the consumer gets screwed, and the people that made the bad loans and handed them off are swimming in money Scrooge McDuck style.

They talk about the telecoms and AT&T specifically, who has been buying out all the competition? I had two phone services land line and cellular, both were bought out by AT&T, my service didn’t get better, my bills certainly didn’t get cheaper. Would it be good for consumers if AT&T suddenly didn’t have to share it’s networks with it’s competitors?

I haven't watched all of it and probably won't tonight, but I question their logic.

That companies are too zealous in allegations of anti-trust I have no doubt, but that does not undermine the value of the entire system. Anti-competitive price fixing results in a wasteful allocation of resources, and higher prices for consumers. Firms, particularly those with monopoly power charge at the marginal cost equal to marginal revenue price creating a deadweight loss, underproviding, and charging a higher price to reap greater profits. Or at least, that's the basic theory behind it, introducing trade makes it messier.

Not that some industries are not natural monopolies due to falling average costs over the supply of an entire market by one firm, but for the most part, new start-ups should be encouraged. An increased number of firms increases competition, breeds innovation, greater product choice and differentiation to cater to any individual consumer's needs and inevitably lowers prices through knowledge spillage as an externality, even if certain firms are able to hold patents for several years.

Again going by theory, if you're a monopolist for a product that has no close substitutes and particularly if that good is a necessity, then you as a firm excercise significant market power. Realistically though, I would argue a monopoly industry is more a theoretical framework (like perfect competition) that rarely if ever applies to a good in the real world, particuarly when you factor in international trade. Most necessities either fit into competitive industries or like utility companies tend to be natural monopolies.

I don't doubt though, that anti-competitive behaviour occurs. Producers may not be able to hold consumers as dependants on their products (well excluding tabacco and pharamaceutical anti-depressants among certain other exceptions that is ) but they can certainly push out would-be new entrants, by deliberately undercutting new entrants through selling below average cost prices and exploiting their inability to secure long term funding while running consecutive years of losses, or otherwise developing insurmountable barriers to entry. It's not like a monopoly has to continuously keep prices competitive to stave off entrants. After all, exit/entry costs in the real world are substantial in most industries and should a monopoly undercut a would be entrant, the new entrant can't simply get an 100% refund on their investment and hitherto accumulated capital. All that is necessary, is the mere threat that should a new firm enter the market, the monopolist will lower prices to unbearable levels that will stave off any would be entrants. How would you suppose competition is to be maintained without anti-trust laws preventing this from ocurring?

Do consumers demand inovation from monopoly producers supplying consumer wants? Sure. While NVIDIA was dominating the graphics card industry with it's series 8 GeForce cards and AMD/ATI was in a rut, they brought out the 8800 Ultra as a superior high-end card to the 8800 GTX. Since then AMD has gotten back into the game and looks what's happened. Numerous releases of new cards and revisions on previous editions, not to mention the price level of low/mid/upper range cards has essentially halved.