Merritt's comments pretty much mirror the attitudes of Adam Smith, who excoriated the large corporations of the day in his magnum opus, _Wealth of Nations_. In Smith's time, the big businesses of the day were government-sanctioned monopolies over colonial regions, such as the Hudson's Bay Company or the Dutch East India Company.

The trouble I see with such ideas is that while capitalism can theoretically start out without any such monstrosities, it never seems to _stay_ that way. Markets, by their very nature of rewarding success and punishing failure, create inequalities. It's not long before a capitalist or group of capitalists gets, while not as super-rich as the current corporate elite, wealthy enough to be able to wield influence over government.

At this point, the struggle becomes one of capitalist ideological purity with itself. Should the ideal of the separation of economy and government be maintained, or should the ideal of profit maximization be pursued by buying influence? History has shown that the latter wins out, if not every time, consistantly enough that it's all over except for the crying.

The USA, after all, didn't have any such entrenched geograhpic monopolies when it gained independence. (Usurping the ones that were hurting the development of industries in the colonies was a major reason for the American Revolution in the first place.) Yet eventually they arose, as they have arisen worldwide.