Anti-Trust Laws were conceived to break up big monopolies in order to allow fair competition between similar companies and guarantee consumers fair prices and quality products.   This assumes that competition leads to best practices and encourages innovation.

Some claim that anti-trust laws are used mainly by smaller businesses suing larger more competitive businesses, in which case anti-trust laws actually work to prevent competition rather than encourage it.  Indeed the natural tendency of competition seems to beat out smaller competitors and dominate the market.

What if the purpose of anti-trust laws were to prevent the concentration of wealth and political power? What if anti-trust laws were designed to protect democracy, not protect consumers and competition? Does government have the right to interfere with big business?

Do some forms of legislation and government practices  tend to encourage monopolies?  High corporate tax rates and regulations tend to encourage mergers because they are toughest on small- and medium-sized businesses. What if employee-owned and run corporations were offered big corporate tax breaks? Would the tendency for corporations to merge decrease?

The Federal Reserve creates fiat money and loans it to large corporations, like Dunkin Donuts, Google, Walmart, Haliburton, and Verizon, at low rates allowing them to expand rapidly and destroy competition.  What if fiat currency were controlled by the U.S. Treasury instead, and the money supply could be expanded only for the purposes of  making loans to municipalities to fund public works projects?

What if the government had never subsidized the construction of railways with public money, later to be used by the Railroad Barons for private profit, inaugurating the rise of big corporations in the US?