United Technologies and Raytheon aerospace units are in merger talks. I would be curious what the concentration of aerospace is among the biggest 4 or 5 players in aerospace. I would guess that it is in the 70% to 90% range.
I am a Capitalist and equity investor through and through, but the FTC has been almost absent since the Reagan years. Through both Republican and Democratic administrations, regulation on the concentration and domination of industries by only a few players has dropped off to almost nothing. This concentration affects us all with higher prices, reduced wages, reduced innovation and lower efficiency. It also adds to the growing divide in wealth distribution.
I think it is great that the government has begun to start looking closely at industrial concentrations like in tech. Most industries are oligopolies now days. Personally, I hadn't even been aware of this trend until recently, but there is a lot of proof of this trend that began in the 1970's and it is moved to a point where it threatens the competitive aspects of capitalism at its core.
You only have to go back to WWII to see the negative results of industrial concentration. In Germany, it was rampant. One of the primary goals that we drove in Europe after the war was the breakup in German cartels into smaller companies that would restore competition. The cartels of Germany in WWII enabled the political control that supported the Nazi party.
The trend of the regulatory environment has been with the "free market" theories of the Chicago School for decades now, Personally, I would prefer less regulation, but without regulation, there are always players who take it too far.
Sure, I am in favor of great returns on my investments, but going too far in industry concentrations can destroy the core of capitalism. The result could well be that we all will lose.
