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… is from pages 277-278 of the original, 1982 edition of Dominick Armentano’s superb but regrettably neglected volume Antitrust and Monopoly: Anatomy of a Policy Failure [2]:
There are, of course, business organizations that do benefit from the power to restrict entry and competition. This power, however, is not a function of product differentiation, or of advertising, or of the “technostructure,” or of market concentration, but is a function of explicit favors and privileges obtained from government. The sole source of the monopoly power, and of the problem, is the state. Yet it is the very state that most of the critics of business (and supporters of antitrust) would expand and enlarge to suit their particular vision of the good society. Knowingly or unknowingly, the critics of big business would enhance the very institution, and the very relationships that are at the root of the social problems they claim to abhor.