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by AnimalMuppet 327 days ago
Monopoly? No. Union Pacific plus Norfolk Southern would have a monopoly on single-line end-to-end rail service in the US, true, but that's the kind of thing that you can get a "monopoly" in. BNSF and CSX interchange with each other, after all. And BNSF and CSX could (and almost certainly would) merge in response. So there's no monopoly argument.

Which doesn't mean that a rational regulator would not turn it down anyway. But rational regulators may not be running the show at the moment. UP sees that there may be an opportunity during the Trump administration. (Note "may" - nobody knows whether there is an opportunity, but there is more of a chance than there was under Biden.)
1 comments
throw0101c 327 days ago
> Monopoly? No.

How about oligopoly then.

If UP/NS happens, we're down from six to five Class Is (ignoring Amtrak):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Class_I_railroads

Then BNSF/CSX? Or CN or CP go after CSX? That's four.

Do we start seeing the acquiring of Class IIs?

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SoftTalker 327 days ago
A regulated monopoly might be appropriate for something like a railroad. It doesn't really make sense for competing railroads to all run their own tracks between the same destinations. We give monopolies to utilities for this reason.

Or maybe all trackage should be government-owned, like streets and highways are. Then any operator can pay a toll and run their trains on any tracks. Traffic coordination is left as an exercise for the reader.

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AnimalMuppet 327 days ago
It's already an oligopoly. Most cities only have one or two. Of the few cities that have three or four (Chicago, say), the merger would reduce that by one.

Let's say you want to ship from Denver to Atlanta. In Denver, you hand your stuff over to either Union Pacific or BNSF. In Atlanta, you receive it from either NS or CSX. You only have two options in Denver, and only two in Atlanta. The merger doesn't change that at all.

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throw0101c 327 days ago
> It's already an oligopoly.

So reducing competition to move further over on the oligopoly spectrum is good how?

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keeganpoppen 327 days ago
why bother going through the performative charade of quoting four words of their post just to respond with something that so flagrantly betrays, charitably, your not having read what they said at all or, less charitably, willfully misconstruing it because you happen to disagree. maybe i'm just the simpleton you are pretending to be with the snarky faux folksy affect, but... "moving further over on the intellectually honest to arrogantly disingenuous spectrum is good how?"

what's worse is that the "more of a bad thing is prima facie worse" argument is so facile that it strains credulity to believe that even you think that it's actually true. i think we would all agree that, ceteris paribus, higher food prices are bad, for example, but i doubt anyone would mistake that for a reason to never do anything that might raise the price of food. the irony of it all is that you managed to turn siding with conventional wisdom-- usually a good bet, by definition-- into a no-upside proposition: either you are right but for the wrong reason-- a pyrrhic victory-- or not just wrong, but arrogantly so.

can we just leave the grandstanding and begging the question to our elected representatives during congressional hearings on C-SPAN where it belongs?

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