'Monopolies Don't Give Us Nice Things'

I've been arguing we need to take a more active approach to reducing market power for many years, without much traction, so it's always nice to see others joining in (it hasn't been enough, but the Obama administration has been better than the Bush administration on this front). This is from Barry Ritholtz:

Monopolies Don't Give Us Nice Things: ...There is little intelligent discussion about the costs of too much regulation on the one hand, and the excesses of capitalism on the other. That is a shame, because both sides of those issues create real economic frictions with substantial societal costs. ...

I would like to address ... how poor a job the U.S. does in regulating industries to which it grants monopoly or oligopoly status. ...

As a nation we do a very poor job of managing competition and adopting the needed standards to improve market efficiency. Television services are just one example. ...

It seems impossible, however, to have a serious conversation about this as long as rich companies buy off elected officials who grant special tax breaks, dispensations and exemptions. You can pretty much name any intractable problem in the U.S. and you can trace it back to the money corrupting the political process. ...