The merger of T-mobile and Sprint is a bad idea. It was blocked in the Obama Era. The Trump administration is allowing it. Bigger-- too-big is problematic. It is not desirable. Nature operates in moderation, in finite systems. We should apply the lessons of nature to the way we regulate businesses. Too big is abnormal. It is malignant-- a kind of gigantism.

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The merger of T-mobile and Sprint is a bad idea. It was blocked in the Obama Era. The Trump administration is allowing it.

Bigger"---"-too-big is problematic. It is not desirable. Nature operates in moderation, in finite systems. We should apply the lessons of nature to the way we regulate businesses. Too big is abnormal. It is malignant"---"-a kind of gigantism.

While I believe that bigger is unhealthy, bad for consumers, bad for democracy, and even bad for capitalism, I do believe that companies can cooperate with each other to be more successful.

The problem is, our economic system still operates in what is becoming an archaic top-down model. The future is bottom-up. That means that instead of fighting for total domination, at the top of the hierarchy, companies should be seeking to succeed with interdependence and cooperation"---"-bottom-up traits.

That DOES mean that companies will not get so big. But there are ways that strong, growing corporations can take bottom-up approaches to synergize, cooperate and coordinate with other strong or struggling companies.

This is not obvious because there is little or no research on this, few if any models of how to do it. We need to invest a lot"---"-literally billions of dollars"---"-into research and development, into academic exploration, of how to keep businesses smaller.

I believe that when this research is done, it will show that smaller is much better, based on many parameters. They include effects on local communities, profitability, worker quality of life, product and economic diversity and consumer choices.

Let's look at some of the arguments FOR mergers, as described in an article by Kimberlee Leonard, The Advantages of Company Mergers.

Leonard points out that mergers can help:

-companies big and small to break into new markets-- categories or regions.

-companies better serve customers by adding products and services

-facilitate financially and resource-wise the development of new products

-tap personnel skills and knowledge resources to build markets, create products

-with economies of scale: "meaning the cost to produce and distribute the same item reduces as the market share increases. Additionally, as companies merge, overall revenues increase, making the end company much stronger financially to obtain credit, investors and strategic alliances."

It seems screamingly clear to me that all of these advantages could easily be achieved by applying the basic bottom-up concepts of cooperation, interdependence, open-ness, transparency and sharing.

Mergers are driven by top-down ideas and values, including domination, control, secrecy, exclusion, elite, centralization, with unsustainable unlimited growth and the goal of winning by elimination of the competition. These approaches are bad for people, for the environment, for workers, for competition and even for capitalism, which depends on a wide-open market, not megalithic giants that have the power to distort balances.

Humanity, living under top-down authoritarianism as a cultural norm, may see bigger as better, bigger as desirable. But it was not always that way and it is a dead-end that is far from the only option.

Wouldn't it be amazing if congress passed legislation blocking not just monopolies but mergers of companies that would be too big. There are a number of ways to define when a company is too big. Some might include, starting with controlling more than 20% of a market. But that will be the subject of another article.

What do you think? Wouldn't it be better if we prevented too-big companies from being created by mergers?

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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