There's a persistent tension between how we think about markets and how we actually run them. The narrative is straightforward: when major firms achieve scale and market dominance, the efficiency gains should flow back to society—that's the textbook argument. Economic gains from large-scale operations, network effects, and consolidated market share create tangible benefits.

But here's where it gets messy. Economic theory has systematically misled policymakers. The models look clean on paper, yet real-world markets operate under completely different rules. What economists predict rarely matches what actually happens when you apply those theories to policy. The gap between theoretical frameworks and practical outcomes keeps widening, leaving regulators scrambling to catch up while the economy rewrites its own rules.