By George Ford Smith
Most academic historians claim that big businesses in the US were economy-choking monopolies at the end of the 19th century, and that government was needed to enforce competition. In reality, the government and businesses joined forces to promote monopolies.
This is what we have now. Big business and government hand in hand.
The joke of this whole idea that the state keeps monopoly in check is that the state is the biggest of all monopolies and it even protects many monopolies that are private.
There was a good EconTalk where Mike Munger talked about how it makes sense that businesses, at some point in their growth, enter a situation where the diminishing marginal returns from honest production become less than the increasing marginal returns of lobbying for state favors.