[georgemcbay]

In large part because we've been sitting on our hands with regard to real antitrust action for the better part of the last 40 years.

This lack of real choice is hidden behind a plethora of brands all owned by the same large corporations.

And it turns out when there are like 4 large corporations that are responsible for almost everything produced in a market it's really easy to do de facto price fixing (in the sense that they [usually] aren't officially talking to each other but have unspoken ongoing gentleman's agreements) allowing all parties to get a nice share of the price gouging with no party triggering a race to the bottom.

[golergka]

Can you bring up a specific example of such a consolidated market for a particular commodity where more than 50% are dominated by the same conglomerate, please?

[Ancapistani]

Feminine hygiene products.

Kimberly-Clark, Proctor & Gamble, Edgewell, and Energizer comprise like 90% of the pads and tampons you'll find on the shelves in an American grocery or discount store.

The largest shareholders of all of the above are the same: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. Combined, they make up ~25% ownership of all of them.

Alternatively: firearms

For a while, Cerberus Capital Management owned approximately a majority of US firearms companies by production, including: Remington, Barnes Bullets, Bushmaster, DPMS, Advanced Armament, Marlin Firearms, H & R Firearms, Para USA, The Parker Gun, Dakota Arms, Tapco, and Storm Lake Barrels. All of the above were acquired by Cerberus from 2006-2009.

All of the above were folded into "Freedom Group". That was later rebranded as "Remington Outdoor Company", then sold piecemeal three years later (in 2020).

[golergka]

> The largest shareholders of all of the above are the same: Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. Combined, they make up ~25% ownership of all of them.

As a CEO, why would sharing 25% of shareholders with another corporation stop you from exploiting their weakness, increasing your market share, increasing your stock price and in the end, increasing your bonus? You're a publicly traded corporation, your contract is public, your bonus mechanic is public, these 25% don't have any other means of control over you.

[prepend]

Vanguard is not an active shareholder setting corporate direction.

Having them as a shareholder in common just means they are in the same index and has no impact on potential collusion.

[georgemcbay]

Which orifice did you pull the 50% strawman out of?

If you're going to ignore the obvious problems with massive consolidation in areas like supermarket chains and virtually everything sold in those chains or the massive problems with consolidated telecomm/ISP companies and the de facto regional monopolies they carve up then I don't think you are arguing in good faith.