I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you arguing that breaking up monopolies takes power away from consumers?

I think GP is saying that nature abhors a vacuum in human affairs as well as in physics: the question isn't whether or not there's going to be a government or a currency or a regulatory climate.

The question is whether those things are going to be determined at a polling place by voters or in a smoke-filled room by gangsters.

I would have gone with corporation instead of gangster, but yes, exactly.

People so often rail against a government telling them they can't do something but so rarely justify they would be able to do it if the government was destroyed.

Who said I had anything against gangsters? ;)

But lets call it what it is: when a bunch of made men see a power vacuum and set up an informal clique with its own rules and loyalty tests while protesting "just a merchant nothing to see here"?

Thats like, the entry for gangster on the Wiki for the Sopranos.