In recent years, businesses—particularly insurance companies, banks, automakers, and defense contractors—have consolidated into bigger and bigger entities. Is this ethically beneficial to a burgeoning capitalistic society? The beauty of capitalism is that good products/services provided at desirable prices will capture a market. Good decisions and implementation are rewarded. Poor ones result in failure. Bigness changes this equation. Let’s look at five arguments against the bigness trend:

The U.S. government is investigating four major airlines for colluding to limit available seats to keep prices high.

On Tuesday, American, Delta, Southwest, and United airlines received letters from the Justice Department demanding copies of all communications between the companies.

President Barack Obama has proposed an overhaul of the nation’s overtime pay rules that could require business owners to pay billions more for overtime.

“We've got to keep making sure hard work is rewarded,” Obama wrote in an op-ed published Monday on The Huffington Post website. “That’s how America should do business. In this country, a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay.”

A judge said Friday that a Family Christian Stores executive acted inappropriately during a bankruptcy auction and rejected the company’s plan to buy itself out. 

The bankrupt Family Christian Stores (FCS) has auctioned its assets to the highest bidder, which is owned by the same company that owns FCS and promises to keep its stores open. In court documents filed Wednesday, the company disclosed that FC Acquisitions agreed to pay about $42 million for the failing bookstore chain. 

FCS came into Chapter 11 bankruptcy with more than $100 million in debt. If approved by a bankruptcy judge, the auction bid would allow the country’s largest Christian bookseller to stay open rather than liquidate its inventory.

A couple of weeks ago I thought I had heartburn or acid reflux, but a treadmill stress test revealed results my doctor declared “highly abnormal.” This was a shock, but not the biggest one. After a heart catheterization, the attending physician said, “You can have a heart bypass or a heart attack. The choice is yours.” He then told my wife, “Your husband is a heart attack waiting to happen.” Eighteen hours later, in the operating room, I wondered if tomorrow would come or if it would be “good-bye” to all I love on this planet Earth.