> Regulation is what enables monopolies

That's patently false. AT&T was a monopoly and they were broken up by antitrust regulation. The absolute most you can say is that some regulations enable monopoly. I contend that we simply should pass the good kind of regulations instead.

Monopoly is enabled by market forces such as economies of scale. Monopolization is a natural market process which happens on its own unless it is actively prevented.

> big pharma loves high regulatory barriers because it keeps competitors out

The FDA, for all the flaws of its current incarnation, is the archetype of necessary regulation. Pre-FDA, the free market did nothing whatsoever to prevent nauseating practices like the adulteration of milk with powdered plaster, lead, and cow brains. The history there is fun but quite gross.

> Somalia

What is notable about Somalia is not its lack of regulation, but the fact that it is perhaps THE least stable country on the planet. It is not the basis for any useful comparison here.

>> Regulation is what enables monopolies

>That's patently false. AT&T was a monopoly and they were broken up by antitrust regulation.

This is patently false in the context of the reply you have made -- after the invention of the telephone more and more and eventually hundreds of telephone services popped up. Then in 1918 (circa WWI), the government effectively quasi-nationalized AT&T by controlling it via a commission and the postmaster general and then AT&T leveraged politicians to create "universal telephone service" provided by AT&T and regulate competitors out of the market while using regulatory capture to use commissions to regulate rates, effectively creating a cartel that drove competitors out of business via regulation.

the whole idea of a "natural market process" here is absolute and utter hogwash. The majority of the market was AT&T competitor up until the regulators stepped in and turned it into an unnatural monopoly enforced by regulatory capture.

>The FDA, for all the flaws of its current incarnation, is the archetype of necessary regulation. Pre-FDA, the free market did nothing whatsoever to prevent nauseating practices like the adulteration of milk with powdered plaster, lead, and cow brains. The history there is fun but quite gross.

You're now arguing why we need regulation rather than whether they create monopolies or not. I see this as a complete red herring, although an interesting topic, that there are some counterpoints to.

> What is notable about Somalia is not its lack of regulation, but the fact that it is perhaps THE least stable country on the planet. It is not the basis for any useful comparison here.

What is notable is that the whole thesis is without regulation it turns into this monopolized hellscape and every inspection of that theory turns out to be false, and sometimes even the opposite.