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One big reason for the great shift in legal opinions is that the economic yardsticks by which bigness is measured have been constantly changing. When the antitrust acts were first passed, few companies were in the $100 million class; today there are more than a dozen in the billion-plus class. Yet nobody raises a serious complaint that these companies are too big. They and other giants have proved that big companies can not only be more efficient in many industries (e.g., autos), but only big companies can afford the research often needed to develop new industries. For example, RCA spent $50 million on black and white TV, another $12 million on color.
Furthermore, economists now recognize that competition is not just between corporations in one industry; it is also between rival industries, e.g., coal competes with oil and gas. Last week the General Services Administration itself argued this when the Justice Department turned down a GSA plan to sell the Government's biggest magnesium plant to Dow Chemical Co. on the ground that the sale would give Dow a complete monopoly in magnesium. But GSA argued that such a monopoly would not hurt consumers because Dow would be held in check by competition from other metals.
Businessmen themselves now recognize that efficiency sets its own limit on bigness unless the company, in effect, breaks itself up into smaller corporations, i.e., nearly autonomous units that actually compete with each other in the way that General Motors' Buick competes with G.M.'s Oldsmobile. Thus, the industrial giants have actually intensified competition. In the auto industry, for example, competition has grown so fierce that the smaller independents feel they can survive only by combining into new giants. The consumer has benefited by better cars at lower prices.
Actually, the only test of bigness and monopolistic power under the new rule of reason proposed by both courts and businessmen is whether the consumer benefits. If he does, then no corporation is too big. If he does not, then the corporation may be too big to be efficient. As a result, it may eventually be put out of business by a smaller, more efficient producer.