| Communism is defined by a complete lack of freedom to change the status quo. I agree that the comparison to communism is silly, but not for this reason. Ultimately, communism is about how the economy is structured, one important feature being that there is no private ownership of capital (though other forms of private property are okay). In other words, a world of capitalist consolidation/monopolies is indeed nothing like communism. There could (and should) still be freedom to change the status quo in a communist economic system though. Edit to add: Consolidation only persists where it is either an effective way to deliver value (Walmart) Putting Walmart in parenthesis here is a bit dishonest. Almost every kind of business benefits from consolidation, because of economies of scale. You might just as well have put Burger King, KFC, or any other chain of anything into parenthesis. Same is true in the high-tech industry, by the way. Just look at the big players in the web, but also count the number of remaining chip foundries on the planet. In all those cases, power is concentrated into few hands, which we know to be problematic from history. |