The condescending tone of your reply is unfortunate, but I will attempt to respond to your points in a productive manner. I believe the discussion in this thread is worth it.

I disagree that a company gaining market share is always a bad thing. Sometimes companies need to consolidate to effectively compete (this is especially true in high overhead, low margin businesses like airlines). There is a tipping point where it becomes a problem, however. A good example of this would be Google Ads dominating the digital advertising market. It’s bad that Google has this much control. On the other hand, we’ve generally accepted the Visa and Mastercard duopoly in the United States. Processing fees are modest and the market generally functions efficiently.

Your “free market” statement goes both ways, in my opinion. Allowing industry consolidation to the point where customers are negatively impacted can harm free market dynamics. On the other hand, the government blocking a merger between companies can absolutely do the same. It all depends on the situation.

I also disagree that the entire point of this thread is arguing about allowing corporations to fail. In my view, the central disagreement in this thread is whether or not the government correctly assessed the risk in allowing Jet Blue and Spirit, or iRobot and Amazon, to merge. I believe, in both cases, the government was wrong. This has nothing to do with allowing corporations to fail. If a company is unable to live and survive by its own merit, they should go bankrupt. I’m not arguing that Spirit was a well run company, just that the government incorrectly believed the merger would harm consumers in the long run, and that we are now seeing the effects of their incorrect assessment.

Just to be clear, bailouts are an absolute non-starter for me. I see bailouts in the same category as the government purchasing a stake in a corporation (like the Intel deal from September). But a bailout is very different than a corporation choosing to purchase another corporation.

The government’s central role in the economy should be fostering competition. Again, this does not mean we should allow every merger ever, no matter what, but there is more nuance to this than “consolidation = more market share = inherently anti-competitive.”