Not to particularly defend Tyson Chicken here

But there’s an important word missing from The Guardian’s report here:

Tyson and the other three top firms control about 87% of poultry production in the state. Economists and food justice advocates largely agree that consumers, farmers, workers, small companies and the planet lose out if the top four firms control 40% or more of any market.

We’re pretty sure “the planet” is mentioned there just because it’s stylish to do so at present. The missing word though is “some” before “economists”.

For this is actually what the argument about antitrust is. The pencil sketch is that some - note some - are shouting that market concentration is in itself the bad thing. Boo! Hiss! More government power! Others, the more rational, are arguing that only market concentration and thus economic power that is exercised to the detriment of consumers matters and only at that point should government do something.

You might guess which side of the argument we’re on from the language used there.

As an example, Google certainly has a significant portion of the search engine market yet they’ve not deployed that power to try to charge for access. Consumer harm therefore doesn’t seem to exist. Chicken has been getting cheaper for generations - what consumer harm is there here?

That is, by that omission of the word “some” in front of economists there The Guardian has entirely plumped for the one side of the argument. Which is their right, of course, no one in Britain at least expects the press to be impartial, we’re not that silly. But it is worth pointing the bias out.

The heart of the current antitrust disagreements is whether potential economic power needs to be regulated or whether it is only exercised economic power, economic power exercised to the detriment of consumers, which does.

We’re on the side arguing that concentration itself, the potential for economic power, is an interesting marker of when the important thing, the consumer detriment, might be possible. But it is not the thing itself which is to be worried about - nor regulated. For government to leap in requires that the power is being exercised and thereby harming consumers.