#antitrust

There is one part of libertarian thought that has always made intuitive sense to me.

Governments are powerful.

They can tax you. Regulate you. Fine you. Imprison you. Conscript you. Search your property. Decide what kinds of businesses may legally exist and under what conditions they may operate. Even a democratic government, constrained by constitutions and elections, possesses powers that an ordinary individual does not.

It therefore makes sense to be suspicious of allowing that power to grow without limit.

The part I have always found more difficult is what happens when power accumulates somewhere else.

A corporation cannot normally put me in prison. Walmart cannot draft me into the Army. Apple cannot make possession of an Android phone a criminal offense. If I dislike what a company offers, the traditional market answer is simple: I am free not to buy it.

That distinction is real.

But I am not sure it resolves the whole problem.

What happens when one company is the only realistic employer in a town? What happens when leaving a communications platform means leaving behind almost everyone you communicate with? What happens when an industry requires such enormous amounts of capital to enter that the theoretical possibility of competition exists much more readily than actual competitors do?

And what happens when a corporation becomes large enough to influence the government that was supposed to provide the counterweight?