> SO's "innovations" were mostly just efforts to game the system. That a very reductive view on innovation. Most innovations are not some fancy new technology.

> SO's "innovations" were mostly just efforts to game the system. That a very reductive view on innovation. Most innovations are not some fancy new technology. They are new way to do deals and partnerships and improve overall process efficiently. That doesn't change the fact that they are real. Interdicting standardized testing and quality control, is an innovation. Making deals with railroads to have an overall more efficient and cheaper distribution model is an innovation. The railroads agree to it as it allowed them to have higher utilization. Would you say for example slaughter houses using refrigerated rail-cars is not a real innovation? Its just evil slaughter houses trying to 'game' the system? At some point in time, doing things a certain way is just more efficient and those companies that can not adopt new processes will be less successful. Had all such innovations been prevented we would be much worse of overall. Often it actually makes sense for most companies to go out of business, as for overall efficiency it doesn't really make sense to be differentiated into 100s of companies. > The federal courts took a clear-eyed view on this and did not see it kindly. No they didn't. Courts didn't create these laws, politicians did. And the enforcement was often very selective and politically driven. The whole history of Anti-Trust went very strongly along with political interest in it until the 70s. Anti-Trust lacked a clear definition and eventually the courts, lead by jurist Richard Posner, created a Anti-Trust definition that requires showing that consumers were harmed. Not only some vague accusations of 'market power'. Under that definition things like Standard Oil would not have gone threw.