[pcwalton]

Antitrust law isn't a socialist idea; it's a capitalist one. The idea behind it is the standard neoclassical principle that markets achieve maximum efficiency, and therefore consumer welfare is maximized, when they are competitive. No less a capitalist than Adam Smith articulated these ideas when he wrote "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

[robomartin]

Friend, the extremists who have taken over the narrative and soul of the Democratic party are not talking about antitrust. They are talking about remaking the US in the image of a demented ideology NONE OF THEM have ever lived under or have any experience managing in any imaginable way. They are in love with an ideology that has laid waste to entire nations across nearly every continent on this planet.

As a Classical Liberal/Libertarian myself I find these people to be absolutely repugnant. They are selling the masses on ideas that will cause incredible damage. I mean, Bernie himself is on video during a debate talking about creating, if I remember correctly, 40 million government jobs. We know EXACTLY how something like that would end, because it has been done in many nations at different scales. The short answer is: Not well at all.

This discussion isn't a matter of opinion, this is a matter of historical fact across nations and time. Nobody who pushes these ideologies can name a single nation on any continent in the last hundred years that has experienced good outcomes from their adoption. And by this I mean, to include raising people out of poverty and generating economic growth at a minimum.

These conversations are like the people who promote coffee enemas to cure cancer, or the flat-earth-ers. Lot's of passion and even followers, but not one of them can back up what they are saying with any semblance of a reality that approaches confirmation of their promises in any way that would not caused them to be laughed out of the room.

The fact that a society like that of the US doesn't laugh these people right out of the political sphere is of great concern. It means, at a minimum, that our educational system is severely damaged. No educated society would elevate these ideas.

Most developing nations in the world aspire to be like the United States of America, and here we have a bunch of politicians and their followers wanting the US to be like most failed nations of the world. This is a bad episode of The Twilight Zone, to say the least.