http://reason.com/blog/2010/01/28/stop-the-car-larry-i-want-...
I think the real solution (to corporate and government overreach) is to consume less, buy local, invest local, use community banks, etc (and also, to think about who we vote for, for a change). I think Lessig's ideals would be better served if he focused on the small but growing movement around these things. But, alas, as Lawyer, he's part of the system in many ways and, as such, a bit of a top-down problem solver.
If anything, the power of corporations has been lessening simply because of the nature of the net/web (just think how difficult it's been for even politically authoritarian societies like China to maintain a control over what people hear/see/think). Fortune Magazine tracks the life of the average Fortune 500 company and it's been in steady decline. The dominance of any individual company is far from permanent and made even less so with continually falling barriers to entry.
The perverse irony is that larger firms like regulation because they're the most able to adapt to them and can use them to keep upstarts out.
Here's Cato's take on anti-trust: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-39.html
Besides, I don't agree with you, because it doesn't take into account externalities. When "efficiency" takes the form of polluting the river because someone else will clean it up, it most assuredly is not a net improvement.
Of course, you meant the grandparent post. That means that you're saying that because witchcraft was seen as a threat to society in the Early Modern period (but _not_ the Medieval period, when the Papal Inquisition regarded witchcraft as a superstition, and referred anyone who brought them a witchcraft charge to Ye Olde Psychyatryste), and the witches were not a threat (although there were real witches -- Kieckhefer, Richard, _Magic in the Middle Ages_ (200)) -- again, because the witches (and the enormous number of innocents who were falsely killed as witches) were not a threat in the 17th Century, anything that anyone sees as a threat at the present day is similarly not a threat.
The right thing to do is to ask whether this particular possible threat is in fact a threat. I agree with your conclusion -- I think that the parent post is right, corporations are no longer the cohesive bloc that they were as late as the 1980s -- but I think you're doing it a disservice by using such a weak argument for it.
Have you ever the of the word "trade" and "merchants"? Do you "buy"? There's a reason for "specialization" and "division of labor". It's why we're so wealthy, because of our economy's vast ability to make stuff and transport stuff. Utilize people's comparative advantage, we can produce more unit of goods than we would otherwise if we do not specialize and trade.
Trade is the stuff of civilization. We should encourage more of it.
Locally produced food is the most obvious, practical thing to buy because it is fresher an tastes better which should be compelling enough on it's own.
I'm not saying don't trade, I just think we should think about what we're buying a bit more. As Fugazi said, "Never mind what they're selling, it's what you're buying!" Heh.
if "Trade is the stuff of civilization" as you say, is it not critical that our trade reflects our personal beliefs?
If you don't like what certain large corporations are doing, don't give them your money. In many cases, as with food, an easy way to do this is to buy from local farmers directly or through local coops.