"Antitrust...History...Boeing and United Airlines.

***In 1934, a scandal erupted over how the former Postmaster General had granted air mail routes to the nation's biggest carriers. The Roosevelt administration canceled all contracts for those airlines which had benefited under the arrangement and passed new antitrust legislation. As a result, the government forbid airlines and aircraft manufacturers from being owned by the same company. With aviation holding companies forced to break apart, BAT would have to survive on its own. Boeing Air Transport, thus, became United Air Lines.***

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/chasingthesun/companies/united.html

In the current US governmental environment Boeing or some telecom media giant could try to buy the Planet from out form under us and there would be no antitrust action aginst them!"

Generally speaking I agree with the "purpose" of antitrust laws. But not for reasons you seem to think is the purpose.
All monopolies are bad. It's the same basis that all dicatorships are bad. It's the same principle the Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This principle does not apply to only private or governmental entities. It applies to humans. Or *even* any conceivable intelligent entity involved in any form of economic relationship [even any kind type of interchange at all].
Monopolies are not possible in a truely Free Market. It is *ONLY* by laws or by force [legal force or unlawful force] that monopolies can exist. Now, monopolies by definition are products of governments, but I'm using the term in the broadest and as in a loose sense as you wish.
Anyone with any knowledge in these matters would call the Shuttle Program an monopoly- that was my point at start of the thread.