Gone are the days of Teddy Roosevelt and his “trust busting.”  That was an old technique, grounded in good intentions.  It was held that competition was good, and that monopolies were bad, for they would inhibit competition.

Flash forward.  Today’s progressives are much more clever, and competition in any form is unwelcome.  In fact, “competition” is a mean, bad word to the “socialist progressives.”

Competition discovers inequalities.  Egalitarianism is the goal. 

In the news this week were two eye-catching stories about monopolies.  First is the question of the airline industry.  After a series of mergers and acquisitions, the air travel service industry has become quite concentrated.  The question arose as to why, in the light of crude oil clicking down from roughly $100 a barrel to a new home around $60, the price of airline travel has not come down. 

We are told that in some cases, the airlines were fully hedged forward.  In other words, they had, in an effort to protect themselves from higher prices, unfortunately locked themselves into what are now considered high prices.  But this reason for ticket prices coming down goes only so far, and at some point the airlines will begin, if they haven’t begun already, pricing their fuel off the new $60 crude level.  So has the competition between airlines been dissolved by the past mergers?  It appears so.

In the health services industry, the Affordable Care Act is seemingly prompting the large firms to seek partners and consolidate. 

Reuters reports, “Health insurer Aetna Inc on Friday said it would buy smaller rival Humana Inc for about $37 billion in cash and stock, in the largest ever deal in the insurance industry.”

Additionally, in the same report, “[m]edia reports have also said UnitedHealth could be eyeing Cigna and Aetna. On Thursday, Centene Corp said it would buy smaller rival Health Net Inc for $6.3 billion.”

And previously, “Swiss property and casualty giant ACE Ltd announced it was buying Chubb Corp for $28 billion. It would also dwarf Anthem Inc's purchase of WellPoint in 2004 for $16.6 billion.”

Federal legislation has indeed prompted industry consolidation in medical insurance.  And for a government that strives for a single-payer system, the ultimate in consolidation, mergers are a welcome event.  For with the mergers comes an excuse for more regulation, and the industry becomes more simplified with fewer players.

The same holds for the airline industry.  Merge away.  Then the excuse for governmental control of unfair business practice prompts more regulations from on high.  The excuse and the increased simplicity apply here as well.

F.A. Hayek noted, “It [monopoly] is attained through collusive agreement and promoted by pubic policies. When these agreements are invalidated and when these policies are reversed, competitive conditions can be restored. ... Anyone who has observed how aspiring monopolists regularly seek and frequently obtain the assistance of the power of the state to make control effective can have little doubt that there is noting inevitable about this development” (The Road to Serfdom, p. 93).

And Hayek’s conclusion: “Once this stage is reached (monopoly), the only alternative to a return to competition is the control of the monopolies by the state” (ibid, p. 89).

Once there was a day where trust-busting was an effort to maintain capitalistic competition to the benefit of the consumer.  Those days are gone.  The progressives of today, unlike Teddy Roosevelt, welcome the concentration of industry.  Certain industries are very welcome – energy, transportation, health care, and health insurance.  Concentrations in these areas lighten the need for the socialist/progressives to explain expanding governmental control over those industries.  The opportunity that mergers and near monopolies provide is welcome to those who seek more government control and more central planning.