In a song about outlaws, Woody Guthrie noted that, “Some’ll rob with a 6-gun/Some with a fountain pen.”

Indeed, the big money thievery in our society today is being perpetrated by the Fountain Pen Gang of corporate monopolists, Wall Street financiers, and Washington lobbyists. They’re trying to pull off another multibillion-dollar heist right now in the airline industry. It’s a merger caper that would gouge consumers, shortchange airline workers, and cut service to communities by further shrinking competition in an already-monopolistic market. Just four giants – American, United, Delta, and Southwest – now control two-thirds of all air travel in the entire US. The only competitive force left is a handful of smaller lines, such as Jet Blue, Spirit, Alaska, and Hawaiian. Currently, though, Alaska and Jet Blue are trying to take over the other two, perversely arguing that cutting the number of competitors will miraculously increase competition and magically reduce prices for consumers.

This is what I call “Santa Clause Economics” – you have to be six years old to believe it. Here, boys and girls, is the reason that less competition is not more: All of these airlines are owned and controlled by the same tiny group of über-rich, Wall Street financial profiteers. For example, Vanguard Group (a $7-trillion global investment powerhouse) is the largest institutional shareholder in American, United, Delta, Southwest, and Alaska, plus the second largest in Jet Blue. So, far from fighting the Big Four, the two monopolistic wannabes would join them to rig prices even higher and make airline “service” more of an oxymoron than it is now.

The word “free” in free enterprise is not an adjective, it’s a verb. We have to free-up the enterprising competitors that corporate monopolists are locking out, decentralizing market power, not increasing consolidation.

Do something

Want to fight monopolization and the centralization of markets? Here are a few places to start:

* The American Economic Liberties Project is part of a growing, cross- ideological movement to combat monopolistic corporations and the systems that entrench their power.

* The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has a thorough resource for starting in your town, from banking and broadband to pharmacy and food: Fighting Monopoly Power: How States and Cities Can Beat Back Corporate Control and Build Thriving Communities

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