It’s not farce, but it is complicated for some reasons including those you mentioned. In the US antitrust took a sideways turn when interpretation of the law b

It’s not farce, but it is complicated for some reasons including those you mentioned. In the US antitrust took a sideways turn when interpretation of the law began to follow the “Chicago school” approach: Essentially that antitrust action was only warranted when harm was done to consumers. With this approach the burden is far more challenging for government to prove. It seems like consumer harm is low bar, but this is not the court of public opinion, or the court of common sense. It’s the American legal system. And American law is sufficiently late-stage that it feels like we’re chasing political ideology now instead of justice.