We're not talking about comparing to a few hundred years back. We're talking about comparing to the time since the Industrial Revolution—and especially most of

We're not talking about comparing to a few hundred years back. We're talking about comparing to the time since the Industrial Revolution—and especially most of the 20th century. I don't know offhand of any specific and scientific measures of consolidation, but it's painfully clear from observation that over the past 40 years, we have had a massive wave of consolidation in many sectors. Just as one example, I recently saw a chart of consolidation in the (book) publishing industry, where dozens of publishers consolidated into several, and then into the big 4 we have today. Similarly, there are a number of fairly widely-circulated charts of the few companies that own nearly all of the various food and household product brands in the US and in Europe. These are widely-known and well-documented phenomena, and it should be easy to find evidence if you go looking for it at all.