As an example, take the off-the-wall proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( D-Mass.) that firms such as  Amazon and Google  be regulated as public "platform" utilities  and that several of their recent acquisitions  be divested to increase "competition."  Or take the radical  perspectives  of long-time progressive Robert Reich, who argued in a recent USA Today column  that  antitrust  regulation  should aim to break up Facebook,  Amazon and Google like  the courts  broke up the older "railroad, oil, and steel monopolies."  According to Reich, "monopolists aren't good for anyone except for the monopolists."

In some sense these proposals and alleged historical accounts are not to be taken seriously since they are based on an almost total misunderstanding of monopoly theory and of the history of antitrust regulation.  On the other hand, the political power of poor theory and fake economic history should never be underestimated.