Saving Barnes & Noble?

Weren't these the same people who watched "You've Got Mail" and sided with Meg Ryan's character?

Folks on the left making these arguments are the equivalent of those on the right pining for the 50s family (which wasn't what they think it was, in any case).

Nostalgia does not make for good economic policy.

It's time to play spot the historical errors:

"For most of American history, the government viewed giant corporations of any kind as inherently problematic. Their size gave them too much power — to eliminate competition, raise prices, hold down wages and influence politics. So the government passed laws to restrain businesses and occasionally broke up the largest, like Standard Oil and AT&T."

1. AT&T's monopoly status was CREATED by government. It was not a monopoly produced by market capitalism. Like other state-granted monopolies, it turned into an ossified behemoth that was very unresponsive to consumers, which is one reason it was "broken up" (into smaller regional monopolies we might note). What really ended the monopoly here was the vigorous competition of the long-distance and then cell markets, including a number of mergers which the federal government did not interfere with.

2. Standard Oil expanded output and reduced prices. The only sense in which it eliminated competition was by doing the exact opposite of what monopolies were supposed to do. It BECAME large by being better. Its story is much like that of Amazon today - it became the biggest by being the best and giving consumers what they wanted at better and better prices.

I challenge folks who believe the fairy tale in the NYT to come up with one example in US history of a monopoly that was:

1. Not protected by the state and
2. Raised prices and reduced output

I submit no such example exists.