Another great essay Scott. The Peter Thiels of the world, however, tell us "competition is for losers". It is no joke that they called him the Prince of the Paypal Mafia. It is very telling that in the US we call it Anti-trust, but stopped serious "trust busting" back in the time of the Teddy Roosevelt. In most of the west, it is called Competition Policy, and it an serious on-going process (but not much more successful). As for primitive humans, it was collusion (or cooperation) that allowed the naked-ape to survive, but unregulated it quickly evolved into oligarchy. When Adam Smith spoke of free markets he meant free from the rentier, yet now the neorentier (who own the intellectual property of others) have replaced the landed gentry. Three or four PIRATE EQUITY firms dictate to much of the world's enterprises. When challenged, one of their executives liked regulation to Hitler invading Poland. SERFS UP, once again.