Agree. I'm also remembering the previous grocery store merger in the western US, where the regulators meddled and, while they did approve the merger, they forced a large number of stores to be sold off, but they were sold to a tiny, inexperienced operation who proceeded to go bankrupt within a year, so rather than an area having two "Albertson's" or whatever, all those areas then had one Albertson's and one vacant store. Anybody with sense could have seen that coming and if they didn't want to lose their convenient grocery store altogether, they might have been arguing to simply allow the full merger.

Why not just block that merger? Well, the "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.

You could also consider the Sprint/T-Mobile merger in those terms: Both were circling the drain and really only competing for the most price-sensitive customers, as everyone knew both had inferior service to the other 2 networks. Either or both could have ultimately been liquidated, to the absolute glee of Verizon and AT&T. While it hurts emotionally to think of there being fewer players in that important and specific market of real MNOs, it's true that the MVNOs do seem to be thriving today and, for people who can do even basic research, you can get way better deals (in terms of value and price) on cell phone service today than you could 10 years ago thanks to them, even with fewer 'real' carriers.

Note: None of this is directly relevant to Paramount, which I don't think existentially needs the merger - from either side.

> The "non-greed" case for mergers is often that while it may result in a dominant position in a narrowly-defined market ('supermarkets'), they are sometimes needed to preserve the existence of that category as an alternative to another giant that has expanded into a new market, in that case mainly Walmart and to some extent, Amazon, both of which can afford to subsidize something like Ritz Crackers with the profits from selling tires, lawn furniture, or AWS.

Ah, but then is the argument that we should allow a merger among smaller players because it prevents a narrowly-defined market from being entirely consumed by larger, broader businesses; or should we argue that the larger, broader businesses that can exert influence over large swaths of the market prevent the existence of a competitive marketplace?