Monopolies

When someone starts giving you static about how the governement needs to stay out of this or that because we live in a "free market economy", it is important to ask them what about the market is actually free. The standard model doesn't usually involve quite as many monopolies as we have today. And here comes another one:

The Justice Department gave approval on Monday to the merger of two rival radio networks, XM and Sirius, a marriage that would create a de facto monopoly in satellite services now used by more than 17 million subscribers.

If the government runs anything it is bad because the government is a natural monopoly. But if a corporate monopoly runs anything that's ok because...