[arrosenberg]

> Do you know why chain stores are successful? It's because their market power allows them to acquire products cheaper from suppliers, which lets them sell those products for cheaper than smaller stores. Lower costs = lower prices = customers benefit. It's silly to say that we need the small store to survive if it sells product X for more than the chain store without offering any other benefit than merely providing the product.

Which is exactly why we have laws on the books from the era when my theory of market power never existed.

Low price = customer benefit isn’t written in stone, except on Robert Bork’s grave.

Customers benefit from a fair distribution of economic activity also, it’s just harder to quantify. Unfortunately some unscrupulous economists have used that fact to push pro-concentration policies.