> Companies manipulating regulators are an emergent behavior of the capitalist system. True. My point here is that we need to not give power to regulators in t

> Companies manipulating regulators are an emergent behavior of the capitalist system. True. My point here is that we need to not give power to regulators in the first place. Power that does not exist can not be captured. I don't believe in some free market platonic ideal. I believe in a a system of property rights and a advocate system of law to defend these property rights. This system is not given to use by god but relies on a complex set of institution that nobody fully understands and constantly evolves. What I am trying to do is evolve it in a good direction. Such a system based on the exchange of property rights within a legal system will lead to growth and prosperity because most of the time you have to provide something useful to others in order to get to your own goals. This is not always the case and there is tons of fraud and other problems but its the only way ever discovered for long run growth and prosperity. Markets can produce results that are worse then one would expect, and certainty worse then general equilibrium models predict. However, I don't think there is anyway that in a market system a case like AT&T could still be such a huge issue after 100 years. Also, I think very often it is the case that market produce results that are not as good as people want, they turn to government and get something even worse. I'm not an expert on the AT&T case, so I'm not qualified to talk on it, I take your point that the market failed to produce what we expected. But, I think if you look historically, how many cases can you find where a market produced monopoly for a long period of time significantly hurt consumers. During most of that time the US had Anti-Trust law, so as a bonus question, how many cases can you find where US Anti-Trust law actually fixed the problem. On neither question you will find many examples. If we flip around the question, how many cases can you find where government provided some sort of grant or regulation that guarantied monopoly or oligopoly? There are almost infinite examples of this. Thank you for the thoughtful discussion. If you know the AT&T case well, please provide me with good sources, thank you.