[turkishrevenge]

As it stands, only an entity as large and powerful as the government is capable of busting up said combines, cartels, and monopolies.

My question is this: if officials at all levels of government are working in collusion with big-business, e.g. former finance executives making key decisions about fiscal policy and spending, who does the actual breaking? Those people will never be voted out, as those positions are usually filled by appointments. The irony is the government, as it stands, is the only entity capable of enforcing the "fair-play" necessary for a free market to function. Yet, if I recall, the government is the bane of free markets in the first place.

[jerf]

What does the size of the government have to do with breaking up monopolies? Does a multi-billion dollar expenditure on the Department of Education somehow make it easier to break up monopolies?

It needs power to break up monopolies, and a certain minimum size to be able to function effectively in this capacity, yes, but performing this function does not require massive staffs of bureaucrats making tons of regulations on every conceivable industry and thus being susceptible to capture in so many places. These two things are totally orthogonal; you can easily have either of "massive regulation" and "monopoly busting actions" without the other. Minimum size for monopoly busting would not be very large; monopolies aren't that tricky to detect.

[turkishrevenge]

I should clarify. My emphasis should have been on issues of power, rather than size. Governments happen to be large institutions for sure, but the power to realize a breakup of monopolistic practice lies in the fact that the government possesses that which private industry does not: a standing army. What is a decree sans power? A government mandate only means anything because it has coercive capability.

Besides, historically speaking monopolies have existed in lieu of strong government regulation or involvement. Look at Germany in the late 19th-early 20th century, e.g. the Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate or Bayer.