Americans hate monopolies.

Except when they don’t.

Consider this Facebook post I ran across taking a free-market advocate to task.

Under the system you propose, trillionaires would be created by default. No reasons, crappy or otherwise would be needed. We’d ditch our anti-trust anti-monopoly law because those require a pretty strong central government to investigate and prosecute. Microsoft merges with Google and Apple. Walmart buys up every other store. A few years later, they all merge together with AOL Time Warner to form an all-powerful organization that will need no name. It will just be called The Company and they will sell everything, with no price competition at all. I assume we’ll also have no minimum wage since that would be government telling business what to do? So now The Company strictly controls how much everyone makes and controls how much every product costs…yeah…I think there would be a trillionaire sitting at the top laughing.

I’m certain this individual thought he was launching an irrefutable, scathing attack on a free market system.

But I read this.

I hate monopolies. Monopolies are awful. Monopolies exploit the people. Monopolies will give an institution too much power. The lack of competition inherent in monopolies means bad service, limited selection and high prices. Monopolies can take total control.  I hate monopolies!

I want a government monopoly!

Why do the people who claim to hate centralized business monopolies seem to be the ones screaming the loudest for centralized government monopoly? They are the same – except a government monopoly is worse. Those guys have lots of guns and nukes.