"Competition is good, monopolies are bad" is a blanket statement about one mechanism of cooperative benefit, gain from trade in competitive markets, against ano

"Competition is good, monopolies are bad" is a blanket statement about one mechanism of cooperative benefit, gain from trade in competitive markets, against another mechanism of cooperative benefit, namely economies of scale. It is not self evident at all that competition is always good: there are necessarily diminishing returns along all the dimensions of cooperative benefit, and they trade off against each other non-linearly. Risk pools benefit from economies of scale. Breaking up CA requires an analysis of the social services affected. This is much, much more involved than the proposal indicates.